Artist Info

Zhang Bu, declared a ‘National Treasure’ of China, has achieved the highest recognition throughout Asia. Former vice-president of the Beijing Art Institute, he is the leader of the modern school of painting in China. Zhang Bu’s paintings are much sought after by collectors, especially in Japan, where his art has met with phenomenal success. All six of his major exhibitions held in Japan were immediate sellouts.

Zhang Bu was born in He Bei province, in Northern China. Interested in art from his youth, he enrolled in the Beijing Art Institute where he studied under the famous Li Keran. He developed his own style of painting, with bold strokes and vibrant, luxurious, glowing colours - a radical departure from the more muted and delicate tones of traditional Chinese painting. Zhang Bu’s paintings are radical and exciting, but by no means esoteric. Often praised for the firmness, straight forwardness, neatness, vigorous rhythm, and clear, powerful strokes, his compositions are “injected with vitality.” His infinite imagination and tremendous zest for life infuse his paintings with great joy and originality.

Zhang Bu has travelled widely - his paintings celebrate not only the well known Chinese landscapes of mountains and gorges, but also less familiar scenes of the desert and the Silk Road. Strong strokes and floods of the blackest ink underlie his unique conceptions of landscape. He may push the horizon to the top of the page or lay fishing boats and twisted roots along the lower margin. Cascading leaves of immense trees make up an endless glade, achieved no leaf by leaf, but with layer upon layer of coloured patterning. Suddenly, the vivid greenery parts to reveal a tree trunk, a waterfall or the home of some forest dweller. Consider, also, the gnarled trunk of an old cherry tree, and a delicate white blossom which pops out from it in the springtime. One grows from the other, but there is a great deal of difference.

Zhang Bu has been acclaimed by authorities in the art world, such as Qun Lingyun, as one of the masters of our time, “He has shaped his own type in the field of material selection, view-finding manifestation and, in particular, colour disposal.” Zhang takes us beyond the usual “mountains of the mind.” He paints camels and dunes in his Silk road series, while also depicting wild flowers in Romania and the temples of South East Asia in his other paintings.