Beschreibung:

Zeng Fanzhi Chairman Mao II 1993 Oil on canvas. 200 x 181 cm. (78 3/4 x 71 1/4 in). Signed and dated ‘Zeng Fanzhi [in Chinese] 1993' lower right. This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Provenance Schoeni Art Gallery, Hong Kong Catalogue Essay Very little has been seen or heard about Zeng Fanzhi's rare and early Chairman Mao paintings of 1993, of which only two exist. One belongs to the artist's collection; another was bought by the esteemed collector and dealer Manfred Schoeni in the mid-1990s and acquired for the present collection, where it has remained until the present day. Born in Wuhan in 1964, Zeng studied at the Oil Painting Department of the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts. His work in this period was heavily influenced by modern realism, in particular German Expressionism, as well the Dickensian intercourse of this enormous industrial city. Unlike many of his peers in China, Zeng's works are internally focused, character portraits rather than socio-political commentary; he is internationally acclaimed for his psychologically illuminating portraiture and generally shies away from it. He is, however, no stranger to depictions of power and psychological violence, both of which figure prominently in his early work. It is not difficult to understand the 1993 Chairman Mao paintings in light of Zeng's oeuvre at that time. At this young age Zeng was already possessed of a heightened sensitivity toward the cruelty of mankind, stemming from both his introverted nature and personal experience. The critic Karen Smith writes:"... (Zeng) found himself drawn to late medieval altarpieces and early Renaissance Mannerists, in which the strong silent sadness and brutality of the Pieta, or Christ crucified, made sense to one who had been penalized for his own goodness or, superficially, the purity of his looks. I asked him how these images appeared to him at that time... "We had seen much worse than that," he said. "With our own eyes, and within our own immediate local environment. The image of Christ crucified was mild compared to that." (K. Smith, ‘All that Meets the Eye: Zeng Fanzhi's Art, 1991 – 2003' in I/We, Hubei 2003, p. 43) While still at the Hubei Academy, Zeng's capacity for composing intricate tableaux of hope and despair intensified rapidly. Spotting a man taking a nap on a frozen piece of pork one summer day, the young artist was inspired to produce the incisive, grisly Meat Series that paired fallen man with bloody carcass. His proximity to a nearby hospital that regularly offered up Dante-esque scenes in its waiting rooms inspired his Hospital Series and, in 1991, his graduation work Xiehe Hospital Triptych II. This monumental triptych featured a transcendent Pieta-like scene amid the stench of suffering in a crowded waiting room. "The ‘Hospital Triptych' was a product of the artist's experience, but without depicting the functions of a hospital, the artist had instinctively extended the implications of the hospital that he saw and interpreted: the psychological and physical pains, the tortures of medical treatment and the frequency of deaths." (P. Lu ‘Story of a State of Mind' in The Paintings of Zeng Fanzhi Shanghai 2006, p. 10) Aptly, at the height of his artistic powers to express collective despair and masochism, Zeng Fanzhi took it upon himself to tackle the subject of the Great Leader. He was not quite thirty. While most of Zeng's works prior to 1993 were inspired by his immediate environment, this year marked a turning point where his works began to take on a more conceptual bent even as his virtuoso brushstrokes bloomed. In 1993 he moved to Beijing, and in this year executed his only two Chairman Mao paintings before embarking on the iconic Mask series. The Chairman Mao works are stylistically similar to the Hospital Series: intricate tableaux of human figures engaged in enactments of power, desire, and despair. In these works Zeng's rendition of weary flesh, hopeless gazes, gnarled hands, and collective suffering is pitch-perfect: "I feel that the color of human skin and the color of meat are sometimes very similar, like when pressure is applied to a leg, or unwanted pieces chopped away from a pi