Village by the Mountain

現代曾密山水紙本墨綎

Zeng Mi's paintings depict the spiritual landscape of an artist who lives like a hermit amidst a noisy and economically flourishing China. Zeng can be seen as representative of the new scholarly painting (xin wenren hua). In contrast to realistic painting, pop art, and other stylistic trends, the new scholarly painting uses traditional tools and materials, brush and ink and paper, but expresses the isolation and insecurity of the individual in modern life. A large part of Zeng Mi's work, like that of many of his contemporaries, was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). His intentionally naive style is in keeping with that of many other painters of his age, among them Nie Ou (see the case in the middle of this gallery). Today Zeng leads a reclusive life in Hangzhou. Zeng Mi graduated from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in 1962, at the height of the social realism movement in China. He is now a staff painter at the Zhejiang Institute of Painting.