Zhang Enli, Chinese abstract painter who wasn’t boxed in by his early figurative art

By Elaine Yau

Zhang Enli is a Chinese artist whose 30-year career has often defied mainstream trends. When peers such as Zeng Fanzhi traded dark, expressionistic paintings of the gritty urban underbelly for a brand of gaudy cynicism, Zhang stuck with his dark-hued portraits of the butchers he saw in his neighbourhood wet market.

Grim-faced and blood-splattered, they are given pink, sinewy arms that look rather like the raw meat lying on top of their chopping boards.

Zhang Enli art from the early 2000s on display in Shanghai. Photo: Shanghai Power Station of Art Museum

Works such as the “Butcher” series were not as popular with collectors when the Cynical Realism school became a market phenomenon in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but these days, works such as Two Kilos of Beef (1993) and Indignation (1993) are selling for millions of yuan at auction.

That’s because Zhang is now represented by a major multinational gallery and his works have been collected by major museums around the world...READ MORE

Cover Image: Zhang Enli at the Shanghai Power Station of Art Museum exhibition space. Photo: Shanghai Power Station of Art Museum