Sold at Auction: Wei Zhang

Zhang Wei ?? Born 1952, China

Zhang Wei was a member of the group of artists that held the first underground art exhibition in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. In 1979 he participated in the first public exhibition of the ‘No Name Group’. One of the earliest artist groups to have emerged from China in the past 30 years, initiated in the post Mao 1970’s by artists who were largely cut off from the world and marginalised in Chinese society. Like his fellow artists in the ‘No name Group’, Zhang Wei kept well away from political art and painted landscapes, cityscapes, still-lifes, and non-political figure paintings using watercolours, oils, and gouaches. Zhang Wei was one of the youngest artists in this group and lived through the transition from Mao and his Cultural Revolution into a post-Cultural Revolution era, when the now well know and international Chinese avant-garde art movement emerged.

Zhang Wei now lives and works in Beijing where he creates art that is both conceptual art and landscape painting, influenced by an understanding of the ancient Chinese philosophy of simple living and containing some elements from Western art practices and ideas.