Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, you need to understand something fundamental about Zhang Fuxing: here is an artist who has understood that to be truly contemporary, one must first be deeply rooted in one’s own tradition. I will stop there and I already see you frowning, with that expression of doubt that you display as soon as we talk about traditional Chinese painting. “Another old master who reproduces the same landscapes for centuries,” you think. You are mistaken. Zhang Fuxing is not a mere continuator; he is a radical innovator who works with a full awareness of his heritage.
Born in 1946 in Tianjin, of Shanxi origin, Zhang Fuxing did not have a conventional artistic career. His first contact with the landscape that would become his favorite subject happened under less than academic circumstances: in 1967, he was sent to work as a laborer in a brickyard in Qingpu, near Shanghai. It was there, surrounded by mud and sweat, that the young Zhang discovered the immanent beauty of the Chinese landscape, those black roofs and white walls, those canals and bridges that would later define his visual vocabulary. “The workers of the brickyard were called ‘kiln flowers’ at the time. After work, our clothes were covered in mud from head to toe,” he confides. “Why didn’t I let myself be discouraged? The water landscapes of Jiangnan brought me this poetry” [1].
It was not until nearly a decade later, in 1976, that he joined the Shanghai School of Fine Arts, later becoming an artistic editor for a newspaper. During this formative period, he studied the innovative approaches of Lin Fengmian and Wu Guanzhong, incorporating expressive elements into his representations of Jiangnan (region of “rivers and lakes” south of the Yangtze). This fusion of Western and Eastern traditions initially met with skepticism but found unexpected support among the great masters of the Shanghai School. During the 8th National Art Exhibition, the famous Cheng Shifa refused to be interviewed in front of his own work, preferring to stand in front of that of an then-unknown artist, Zhang Fuxing.
What interests me about Zhang Fuxing is his ability to capture the essence of a place while transcending its literal representation. Take his paintings from the “Jiangnan Water Landscapes” series: they are not merely picturesque reproductions of traditional villages. Zhang abstracts the vernacular architecture, black roofs and white walls, into geometric shapes that float in a space imbued with water and ink. Water, a fundamental element of these compositions, is often not directly represented but suggested by strategically placed empty spaces. This approach is reminiscent of that of composer Claude Debussy, who knew that music is found as much in the silences as in the notes played. Zhang understands that the presence of water can be more powerfully evoked by its apparent absence, by the whites of the paper that become mirrors of water under our gaze [2].
At the turn of the millennium, as his reputation as a painter of Jiangnan was solidly established, Zhang made a bold decision that demonstrated his refusal of artistic complacency. He abandoned his favorite subject to turn to a territory rarely explored in traditional Chinese painting: the great mountainous landscapes of Western China. “I do not want to repeat the ancients, nor others, nor myself,” he declares with the quiet assurance that characterizes true innovators. In 2002, he even left his management position at the newspaper to travel through the western regions of the country, embarking on a ten-year creative journey.
The resulting series, “Hymn to Nature,” represents a radical break with established conventions. Zhang does not merely paint mountains; he reinvents the very way they can be represented in Chinese art. Inspired by an aerial vision of the Tianshan mountains at sunrise, he abandons the three traditional perspectives of Chinese landscape painting (high, deep, and flat) to adopt a plunging view that completely reconfigures the pictorial space. “Why can’t we use a plunging perspective? Modern technologies and transportation offer us such good conditions, why not use them to paint from angles that the ancients never explored?” he wonders with that insatiable curiosity that characterizes him.
Zhang’s approach to color is just as revolutionary. In traditional Chinese painting, color is generally secondary to ink. Zhang, however, elevates light to the rank of color and transforms the shadows of valleys into expressive brushstrokes. He develops a unique method of chromatic application: “breaking ink with color, breaking color with ink, merging color and ink” (以墨破色，以色破墨，色墨相融). The result is a pictorial surface of extraordinary richness, where the transitions between ink and color create unpredictable effects of striking beauty.
If I were to place Zhang Fuxing in a Western artistic genealogy, an exercise always imperfect but sometimes enlightening, I would say that he shares with American abstract expressionists like Mark Rothko a concern for transcendence through color and form. Like Rothko, Zhang creates pictorial spaces that invite meditative contemplation. But unlike Rothko’s pure abstraction, Zhang’s work remains rooted in the natural world, functioning in that fascinating space between representation and abstraction.
At this stage, I must address an often neglected aspect of Zhang’s practice: his engagement with urbanity. After conquering traditional rural landscapes and majestic western mountains, he set himself a new challenge: how to represent contemporary urban landscapes with the traditional tools of ink and xuan paper? This concern reveals his acute awareness of the radical transformations China is undergoing, where rapid urbanization is redefining society’s relationship with the environment.
In his urban landscapes, Zhang does not seek to literally document skyscrapers and highways, but to capture the spiritual essence of the modern city. He applies to the urban environment the same sensitivity that he developed for mountains and rivers. “Every time I walk on the Bund, I feel a kind of excitement, seeing how everything changes day by day,” he confides. “We must change our concepts, transfer our passion from natural landscapes to urban landscapes” [3].
This ability to find poetry in contemporary environments is reminiscent of the approach of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, who transforms the crowded streets of Hong Kong into spaces of aesthetic contemplation. Both understand that modernity is not the antithesis of traditional beauty, but simply a new terrain for its expression.
Zhang is not just a painter of landscapes; he is also a remarkable artist of flowers and birds, a traditional genre that he has reinvented with contemporary sensibility. His series “Fields of Colored Flowers” testifies to his desire to free floral motifs from traditional formal constraints. Using bold compositions and expressive color applications, he breathes new vitality into a genre sometimes considered conservative.
One of the most striking works from this series is his representation of red persimmons in the water villages of Jiangnan. “The red persimmons, the intoxication of Jiangnan,” writes a critic about these paintings. “Amidst the jet-black tiles and powder-white walls, in the variations of black and white, the ripe persimmons on the tree, in the village, on the hill, resemble the rosy cheeks of a young girl after drinking, intoxicating the water village, reddening Jiangnan” [4]. This poetic description perfectly captures how Zhang uses color as an emotional focal point in his compositions.
Zhang’s success is not solely explained by his innate talent or technical mastery, although these qualities are undeniable. What truly distinguishes his work is his deep engagement with life itself. His painting is not a romantic escape into an idealized past, but a direct confrontation with reality as he has experienced and observed it. Whether it is the water landscapes of Jiangnan that he knew as a worker, the western mountains that he conscientiously explored, or the urban environments that he inhabits today, his art is always rooted in lived experience.
This authenticity is the source of the emotional power of his work. As one critic observes: “The source of the spiritual strength in Zhang’s painting lies in his sincere engagement with life itself. His art is not simply the product of an unbridled imagination, but rather a distillation of his careful observations and personal experiences of the natural world” [5].
It is perhaps this quality that explains why his art resonates with such a wide audience, transcending the divisions between connoisseurs and laypeople. His paintings are technically sophisticated and conceptually rigorous, but they also communicate an immediately accessible emotion. In a world of art often obsessed with conceptual opacity, this emotional clarity is refreshing.
Of course, like any significant artist, Zhang is not immune to criticism. Some purists reproach him for straying too far from the traditional canons of Chinese painting, while others, at the opposite end of the spectrum, might wish for him to break even more radically with tradition. These criticisms miss the essential point of his approach, which is precisely to negotiate this productive tension between tradition and innovation.
Zhang himself is aware of this delicate position. He readily quotes a Chinese proverb that says to create something new, one must first master the old. But he immediately adds that this mastery is not an end in itself; it is only the starting point for personal exploration. “We must constantly absorb the excellent and advanced cultural elements of the world to enrich our own content, establish new pictorial styles, this is the responsibility of the artists of the Shanghai School,” he affirms.
At a time when so many contemporary Chinese artists seem caught between two extremes, either completely rejecting tradition in favor of generic internationalism or nostalgically retreating into an idealized past, Zhang offers a third way. He demonstrates that it is possible to be deeply rooted in a specific cultural tradition while being resolutely contemporary and open to global influences.
In this sense, his work represents a potential model not only for the future of Chinese painting but also for how artists around the world can negotiate the relationship between cultural heritage and contemporary expression. At a time when globalization threatens to homogenize cultural expressions, Zhang’s approach reminds us of the importance of cultivating distinctive voices rooted in specific traditions.
As we stand at the cultural crossroads of the 21st century, Zhang Fuxing’s work offers us a precious lesson: the future belongs neither to those who blindly reject the past nor to those who desperately cling to it, but to those who can transform it with intelligence and sensitivity into something new and vital.
This is perhaps Zhang’s greatest achievement: having created art that is indisputably Chinese in its cultural and technical roots, but universally human in its emotional and intellectual resonance. In an increasingly fragmented world divided by political and cultural divisions, his work reminds us of our shared humanity and our common ability to find beauty in the world around us.
The next time you find yourself facing a work by Zhang Fuxing, whether it is a water landscape of Jiangnan, a majestic western mountain, a dynamic urban landscape, or an exuberant floral composition, take the time to truly look. Beyond the technical virtuosity and formal beauty, you might discover something deeper: a vision of the world that honors the past while embracing the present, that celebrates cultural specificity while speaking a universal language, that finds poetry in the sometimes chaotic transformations of our time.
And is that not, after all, what we ask of truly meaningful art? That it helps us see our world, and ourselves, with new eyes.
- “Shanghai School Painter Zhang Fuxing: Seeking New Ideas from Painters, Recording Landscapes with Paintings,” CCTV News, January 9, 2024.
- Yu, Yunzhi, “Reflections on Zhang Fuxing’s Ordinary Homeland Paintings,” Sina Collection, September 13, 2012.
- “Shanghai School Painter Zhang Fuxing: Seeking New Ideas from Painters, Recording Landscapes with Paintings,” CCTV News, January 9, 2024.
- “Shanghai Master Zhang Fuxing’s ‘Red’ Jiangnan,” CCTV Network, October 14, 2024.
- Feng, Yiyu, “Simple and Unique, Painting with Heartfelt Imagery, A Brief Discussion on the Works of Famous Landscape Painter Mr. Zhang Fuxing,” Shanghai Art Network, June 5, 2024.
