Zeng Fanzhi

The Estella Collection, United States
Sotheby's, Hong Kong, April 9, 2008, Lot 1183
Acquired by the present owner from the above 

Hong Kong, Hanart TZ Gallery, New Paintings by Zeng Fanzhi, March - April 2005, pp. 38-39
Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum für Moderne Kunst, Made in China: Works from the Estella Collection, March - August 2007, fig. 99, n.p., illustrated in color
Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Made in China: Contemporary Chinese Art at the Israel Museum, September 2007 - March 2008

This painting is in excellent condition. At the pull margins of the left and right sides, primarily in the yellow, there is scattered cracking to the heavily impastoed areas with intermittent small losses. Under ultraviolet light there are no apparent restorations. The canvas is framed in a wood frame painted black with a ¼" float.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Within the realm of Chinese contemporary art, Zeng Fanzhi stands apart as an artist whose renown and prominence is undeniably global in scope. Beginning his artistic career in 1991, Zeng’s journey has stretched past two decades and through countless international exhibitions. With pinpoint emotional candor and innate psychological insight, Fanzhi has presented the world with paintings that paradoxically wrench us from our mundane realities whilst confirming the inherent superficiality of those circumstances. Broadcasting a mesmerizing mix of Expressionist allure and refined execution, Chairman Mao and Us, from 2005, is a consummate fusion of the Eastern and Western aesthetic influences that describe Feng’s corpus, and an impassioned and radically impressive exemplar of his oeuvre.

Implicitly bucolic yet indescribably foreboding, Chairman Mao and Us is enigmatic and deeply affecting. Three figures, Chairman Mao surrounded by two small children, stand amidst a roiling swarm of flora, set against an otherworldly backdrop defined by blush red cloud-like forms. Whereas in his earlier seminal Mask series Zeng presented anonymous figures cloaked in obscurity by masks depicted with exaggerated physiognomy, in the present work Mao and “us” – implying that the young boy is, in fact a self-portrait of the artist as a child – are obscured by the swirling landscape that rises up to engulf them, their smiling faces blurred by Zeng’s line. The figures of Mao and the small girl both wear red handkerchiefs around their necks, a deliberate allusion to the earlier Mask paintings and a common trope of Zeng’s narrative style meant to evoke a provincial time before the formation of a capitalist society pervaded by Western traditions and values.  Compared to his provocative 2004 painting, Tianamen – in which Zeng overlaid Mao’s visage atop a rendering of Tianamen Square, deity-like in its dominance – Chairman Mao and Us shows the Communist leader of the People’s Republic of China as protective father figure gazing out into the future with hopeful optimism. In a stunning feat of painterly prowess, Feng uses his palette, narrative composition, and controlled expressionist stroke to tap into the depths of our emotional consciousness, provoking intense feelings of nostalgia tinged with the eternal battle between hope and despair.

As is to be expected from an artist who came of age during the second half of the Twentieth Century in China, the figure of Chairman Mao looms large in Zeng’s oeuvre. In 2006, the year after he painted Chairman Mao and Us, the artist embarked upon a series entitled This Land So Rich In Beauty, whose name derives from Mao’s poem Ode to Snow. Seemingly a visual exploration of Mao’s literary work, the canvases of this series depict Mao in landscapes of varying atmospheric conditions, a lone figure overcome by the majesty of his natural surroundings. In all of these paintings, as in the present work, Zeng similarly invites his viewer to experience the full vivacity of nature itself while standing awestruck in the face of its overwhelming sovereignty. A brilliant fusion of figurative and landscape traditions, and Eastern and Western techniques, Chairman Mao and Us captures the very essence of Zeng’s prowess and proclaims the full force of his global significance and appeal.