Beschreibung:

Zeng Fanzhi Xiehe Hospital Series Triptych 1992 Triptych: oil on canvas. 70 1/2 x 183 1/8 in. (179.1 x 465.1 cm) overall. Signed and dated “Fanzhi 92” along lower edge; also signed and titled “ ‘Xiehe Triptych’ Zeng Fanzhi” on the reverse.
Provenance Acquired directly from the artist Exhibited Guangdong, Guangzhou Convention Center, The First Guangzhou Biennale, 1992; Shanghai, Shanghai Art Museum, I/We, 1991-2003: The Painting of Zeng Fanzhi 2003 Literature J. Huang, ed., Contemporary Art of China 1989 – 92, Jiangsu, 1994, pp. 133-134 (ill.); M. Gao, Contemporary Chinese Art Volumes: Analysis of Oil Painting 1979-1999, Hubei, 1999, p. 62 (illustrated); P. Lu, “Story of a State of Mind,” The Painting of Zeng Fanzhi p. 11 (illustrated); Shanghart Gallery, Raw Beneath the Mask, Shanghai, 2001, p. 5 (illustrated); H. Wu, ed., The First Guangzhou Triennial – Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990 – 2000), Guangdong, 2002, pp. 174-175 (ill.); Art China, Volume 2 Number 3, 2003, p. 48 (illustrated); I/We: The Painting of Zeng Fanzhi 1991 – 2003, Hubei, 2003, pp.24-25 (illustrated); Shanghart Gallery, Scapes: The Paintings of Zeng Fanzhi 1989-2004, Shanghai, 2004, p. 6 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay Zeng Fanzhi was born in 1964 in Wuhan. He dropped out of middle school, but then won a place in the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts in 1988. While at the Academy he developed a deep interest in German and American Expressionism—in particular the work of Raoul Dufy and Willem de Kooning whose techniques he greatly admired. Li Xianting, the éminence grise of Chinese contemporary art, was suitably impressed by Zeng’s work while he was still in the Academy and began promoting the young artist’s work to influential critics and dealers. Zeng’s uncanny ability to bare the souls of his subjects on canvas first emerged powerfully in his Meat and Hospital series. The genesis of these two series lay in a butcher’s shop and the Xiehe Hospital that the young artist passed almost daily. In Zeng’s eyes, cruelty was prevalent throughout the world: not only in the physical suffering he witnessed in the sick, lingering cattle-like in waiting rooms, but also in the myriad specters of psychological brutality that preyed on individual souls. Zeng recalls his moment of inspiration: “Everyday I saw numerous people queuing to see the doctor. I saw patients in mortal danger who needed emergency treatment. I suddenly felt that this was the emotion I had to portray; I needed to paint a series with this feeling. I thought about a large-scale piece and utilized all the techniques, skills, and methods of observation I had previously used in my solo exhibition, and I was particularly excited during this period. I was very satisfied when the painting was completed. The next day I wanted to take it to the academy to show the teachers before the paint was dry.” (F. Zeng, in an interview with X. Li, “A Restless Soul,” I/We: The Painting of Zeng Fanzhi 1991 – 2003, Hubei, 2003, p. 156) Zeng has created only three Hospital triptychs, of which the present lot is the second. Xiehe Hospital was presented at his graduation exhibition in 1992 to an extraordinary reception. The triptych is a monumental, intricate tableau of suffering and redemption. Each panel features a congregation of gaunt bodies gathered against a darkly grim background; but for the red crosses on the doctors’ and nurses’ uniforms, the setting could well evoke a concentration camp. In the central panel, a haunting interpretation of Michelangelo’s Pieta presents the compassionate nurse cradling an anonymous patient’s corpse. On the right, a second nurse who recalls Mary Magdalene offers spiritual but not physical redemption in her solicitous tendering to the supplicant bystander, while the patients crowded on the bed below lie at the mercy of a hospital attendant’s cigarette ash. The left panel is perhaps the bleakest of the three, in which the saint-like figure presiding over the trio of bodies directly fixes the viewer with a gaze that is omniscient, but bleached of hope. Critics perceived Xiehe Hospital, painted in the crucial period of the artist’s formative years, as emblematic of Zeng’s perspective on social relations as