Zhang Xiaogang valuation
The Bloodline family portraits: identical grey faces from a Cultural Revolution photograph album.
Zhang Xiaogang was born in Kunming in 1958 and lived through the Cultural Revolution as a child; his parents were sent away for re-education.
What a work by Zhang Xiaogang is worth
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Bio
Zhang Xiaogang was born in Kunming in 1958 and lived through the Cultural Revolution as a child; his parents were sent away for re-education. After a difficult decade of expressionist work and heavy drinking, a 1992 trip to Europe and then the discovery of his family's old studio photographs produced the Bloodline series, which is what he is known for: stiff, frontal, near-identical family groups with smooth grey faces, painted in the manner of a retouched studio portrait, connected by fine red lines and marked with patches of light like a photographic flaw. He is among the most internationally recognised Chinese contemporary painters.
The Bloodline paintings are the centre of the market and the smooth, evenly finished grey surfaces are the condition issue, since any retouching, abrasion or stretcher mark shows immediately on an unmodulated ground. Works are unique and the title, date and dimensions identify a specific painting, as the compositions are deliberately similar. There is an editioned output of prints and of sculpture. Signature and date are usually on the face, lower corner, in Chinese characters and pinyin. Gallery provenance and exhibition history are the normal reference.
The Sichuan Academy, the South West Art Group and Venice
Zhang entered the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in Chongqing in 1977 and graduated in 1982, then spent three difficult years working on building sites and for a dance troupe in Kunming. In 1986 he formed the South West Art Group with Mao Xuhui, Pan Dehai and Ye Yongqing among others, and in 1989 he showed in the China/Avant-Garde exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.
A photograph of his mother as a young woman was one of the starting points for Bloodline. Bloodline: Big Family paintings were shown in the Italian pavilion at the centenary Venice Biennale in 1995, in The Other Face: Three Chinese Artists, and in the mid-1990s he exhibited in Brazil, France, Australia, Britain and the United States.
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