Zeng Fanzhi was born in Wuhan, China in 1964. Academically trained in the late 1980's and early '90's at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts, Zeng subsequently discovered that the inspirational idea for painterly composition is, in large measure, the essence of a work's immediate and long-term impact. Zeng also became particularly interested in German Expressionist painters while he was at school in 1987. In the third year of his studies, he put Soviet Realism aside and began to explore expressionistic approaches to painting. His works of this period have further echoes of another of his favorite artists, Beckman, but when it came to creating work for his degree show, the Xiehe series. The allegorical power of this series cannot be overemphasized, for the works speak to a social disconnect that ran through all classes of Socialist China and that have reemerged in new forms amidst the radical economic transformations characterizing China's rise for more than a decade.
