Zeng Fanzhi

The paintings of Zeng Fanzhi are rich in visual and historical complexity, showcasing a daring blend of Eastern and Western artistic traditions.Born and raised in Wuhan, China, he graduated from the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in Wuhan in 1991. From the nineteenth century until the 1990s, Wuhan was one of China's most prosperous cities and a site of cultural convergence between the East and the West. During his youth, Zeng was influenced by China's '85 New Wave movement, where artists sought new, often more conceptual forms of expression following the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. He avidly studied Western art, with a particular interest in German Expressionism and French Romanticism, learning how these movements' artists depicted their experiences during times of significant societal change.