Zheng Zaidong (Cheng Tsai-Tung)

Hong Kong, Hanart TZ Gallery, Cheng Tsai-Tung: Collected Songs, 2001, illustrated
Jakarta, Edwin's Gallery, Interplay: Chinese Contemporary Art, 2003, illustrated 

Zheng Zaidong (Cheng Tsai-Tung) is one of the few Taiwan painters whose works circulate in the mainland Chinese art scene. He was included in the National Art Museum of China exhibition Towards a New Image: Twenty Years of Contemporary Chinese Painting in 2001 as one of the 20 artists to represent two decades of Chinese modern art; the show traveled from Beijing to Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou. A pioneering painter of the New Individualists of Taiwan in the early 1980s, Cheng started his career with an Expressionist style and his subject is usually biographical. He identifies with China's traditional literati and, for this pair of paintings, uses a color scheme popular in early twentieth-century China to create a nostalgic and meditative mood. The titles come from classical poetry. Another work from this series is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.