Zhang Hongtu
Chinese, active United States, born 1943
- Names
張宏圖
Zhang Hongtu
- Born
Gansu October 20, 1943
- Active
- Occupation or Type
painter
- Bio
Zhang Hongtu was born in 1943 into a Muslim family in a small town in the Gansu province of northwestern China. From a young age he wanted to be an artist, but political and social pressures in Communist China during the 1950s and 1960s frustrated his dream. After nearly a decade of working as a designer at a state-owned jewelry company, Zhang accepted an opportunity to study at the Art Students League in New York in 1982. He has resided in New York ever since.
Zhang is known for infusing Chinese themes with Western media and perspectives, often for ironic or interrogative effect. His Long Live Chairman Mao series of the late 1980s to 1990s won him international acclaim as a leading figure in Chinese political Pop Art. From the late 1990s, he began producing oil paintings of Chinese landscape masterpieces in the style of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists in his Ongoing Shan Shui series.
- Gender
Male
