ZENG SHANQING: The New Ink Painting

In Zeng Shanqing's recent works can be seen the ultimate late flowering of a talent that had earmarked him in the 1950's as one of the most gifted young artists of his generation in China.

Zeng's work constitutes a persuasive appeal to us to just look at the work and not try to extract some moral from it. He has had more reasons than most to wish to promulgate a political message, given his first-hand experience of Maoist political suppression. But such a purpose, if it consciously exists, is subordinated to the creation of art—to paintings that stand as expressions of his gifts as an artist, which repay careful scrutiny with new insights and new perceptions about ourselves and the world about us, not conduits for the transmission of an “idea”.

He was born in 1932 in Beijing and thus formed part of the ill-fated generation of intellectuals which was to suffer so tragically under the depredations of Maoist excesses during the Cultural Revolution.

As a very young artist however his promise was swiftly recognized and he graduated from the elite Central Academy in Beijing in 1950. Within two years he was appointed to a prestigious teaching position there, due in part to the regard in which he was held by his mentor, the famous 20th century master, Xu Beihong (1895-1953).

These recent works represent a ripening of Zeng's talent, a final vindication of the acknowledgement accorded him in the very early, hopeful years of Mao's China. He has never allowed bitterness about the lost years to affect his determination to produce fine, fresh, original paintings rooted in an early mastery of Western realism and Chinese classical technique. As his strength has returned over the last years it has now become clear that he represents one of the most convincing examples of a Chinese artist who has not only created a flawless fusion between East and West, but comes to the task with such a deep grounding in the Chinese and Western Classics allied to an intuitive understanding of modern aesthetics.

Zeng Shanqing's work can be found in numerous collections worldwide including the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University, the British Museum, the Beijing Artists Association, and The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

For further inquiries please contact Michael Goedhuis or Rebecca Durnin at (212) 535-6954.