Больничная серия 1994

Zeng Fanzhi made this painting, titled 'Hospital Series,' using fluid brushstrokes and a stark colour palette of reds, browns, and fleshy tones. It feels like the painting came into being through layers of raw emotion, each mark a response to the last. I can imagine Zeng, wrestling with the canvas, trying to capture something visceral about the human condition. The paint is applied with a directness that speaks to the urgency of his vision. Look at those hands—clasped tightly, almost grotesque in their intensity. They communicate a sense of anxiety, a kind of pent-up energy. I am reminded of the German Expressionists, like Kirchner or Heckel, in the way Zeng uses distortion and exaggeration to convey inner turmoil. Artists are always in conversation, borrowing and riffing off each other's ideas across time. Painting is, after all, an embodied expression, embracing uncertainty. And it's this ambiguity that allows for multiple interpretations, meaning that is never quite fixed.