Zeng Fanzhi is a leading figure in contemporary Chinese painting, known for psychologically charged canvases that track China’s rapid social change. Early “Hospital” and “Meat” series set a raw tone; the later “Mask” portraits—anonymous figures in crisp suits—became emblems of public façade and private anxiety.
His brushwork subsequently loosened into sweeping, calligraphic landscapes and tangled thickets, absorbing Western expressionism into literati traditions. Moving between portrait and landscape, surface performance and interior life, he keeps formal experimentation at the fore.
