Zeng Fanzhi - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Wednesday, February 11, 2009 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Exhibited

    Singapore Art Museum, Zeng Fanzhi—Idealism, 30 April – 11 July, 2007
     

  • Catalogue Essay

    Zeng Fanzhi is one of the most acclaimed Chinese contemporary artists, known for his highly individualistic temperament and his expressive canvases. After seven years of the critically acclaimed Mask series, Zeng moved onto a new era that brought together all of his previous individual painting elements. Since 2001, he started both the abstract landscape and portrait series on massive scales.
    "Constantly changing, fluid formation filled with movement, vigor and power, evincing partly mimetic characteristics and partly ecriture-like, gestural, motory improvisations or physical, tangible structuring; fill the dynamic canvases of Zeng today." (L. Hegyi, ‘The Visual Epos of Zeng Fanzhi', From Heaven to Earth:Chinese Contemporary Painting, Bologna, 2008)
    The present lot is one of the large-scale narrative paintings combining Zeng's portraits and abstract landscapes.The subject,Huang Jiguang, is considered a national hero in China for his heroic act of physically blocking multiple machine guns with his own torso so that the People's Volunteer Army could win a critical battle in the KoreanWar. His story has been repeatedly taught to generations of Chinese students. For Zeng, who uses quotidian matters to reflect forceful expressions, the present lot not only presents the story but captures its spirit.

37

Huang Jiguang

2006
Oil on canvas.
215 x 330 cm. (84 3/4 x 130 in).
Signed and dated ‘Zeng Fanzhi 2006 [in Chinese and Pinyin]' lower right.

Estimate
£200,000 - 250,000 ≠†

Sold for £361,250

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

12 Feb 2009, 7pm
London