Zhang Xiaogang Born in Yunnan Province in 1958,graduated from Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1982. Known as a symbolist-surrealist and a member of the Avant-Garde movement, worldwide art historians noted that Zhang was influenced by Picasso and Dali. Now he works and lives in Beijing.Referring to the Bloodline paintings, Zhang notes that old photographs "are a particular visual language" and says: "I am seeking to create an effect of 'false photographs' - to re-embellish already 'embellished' histories and lives." He adds: "On the surface the faces in these portraits appear as calm as still water, but underneath there is great emotional turbulence. Within this state of conflict the propagation of obscure and ambiguous destinies is carried on from generation to generation



Zhang Xiaogang has been internationally recognized and widely exhibited as one of today's leading artists of China. Inspired by Chinese family portrait photography, his compositions portray silently staring figures that convey a remarkable and undeniably powerful presence. His works are delicately executed in such a way that, although the subjects are painted against a flat background and lack volume, the melancholy expressions of their faces are hauntingly realistic. His works question the future of the institution of family in the aftermath of China's Cultural Revolution, an event which greatly impacted Zhang Xiaogang's generation. He has exhibited extensively around the world and his work is in the collections of several major museums.

Zhang's paintings also suggest something else - the enormous emotional pressures that a newly emergent Chinese middle-class has had to sustain, and which, to some extent at least, it continues to sustain. These are people with an immense turmoil locked up inside them. The turmoil is signalled by small signs. For example, in some of the group paintings one of the subjects, usually a child, will have a squint, where one pupil, rather than staring directly ahead, wanders into a corner of the eye-socket.Zhang Xiaogang notes that Chinese society is undergoing a process of rapid transformation, and that this has raised a whole series of questions that most Chinese have never previously had to ask themselves. The remarkable series of painting that he has created since the beginning of the 1990s formulate these questions, but do not venture to supply answers. They are ambiguous, in the sense that most successful pictorial art is ambiguous. What his work does is to invite the spectator to think about the situation, to explore it from several points of view.

CONCLUSION:

I still expect my own works to have a kind of psychological resonance. This is the sensitivity of art, and I believe this is very important to an artist. At the same time, living in an age that we could call complicated, I still respect an ancient principle: art should manifest a person's unique disposition.

Find More about Zhang Xiaogang Paintings and Exhibitions at Saatchi-Gallery

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/zhang_xiaogang.htm