Painter Zhang Xian (张弦)1931-1936 in Shanghai
Posted on 2009年05月22日by dingyuhua
We don’t know the names of many of the painters from the Chinese Republican Period. One reason is because some of these artists passed away in their early youth, and thus their names have faded from people’s mind. Fortunately people can still find a scattering of stories about them from old magazines or newspapers. Those fragmentary writings and photos magically revive the life stories of the artists and the times they lived in. One of these stories is from Painter Zhang Xian.
Zhang Xian died when he was only 35 years old. His most prolific artistic period was in Shanghai from 1931 to 1935. Zhang Xian graduated from the École des Beaux-arts where he spent eight years studying. By 1931 he had returned to Shanghai and begun working at the Shanghai Art School. Like most of the artists at that time, particularly the artists who painted oil-paintings, Zhang Xian could hardly make money from selling his work. Lucky artists could get a job in an art school, but still the job wouldn’t be well paid. In the last period of Zhang’s life he suffered from illness and poverty. His death touched off a violent dispute between Fu Lei and Liu Haisu over its cause. Fu Lei, a great literature translator, was well known for his straightforward personality and irritable temperament. He was a friend of both Zhang Xian and Liu Haisu. In spite of that in his autobiography he insisted that Liu Haisu had to take the blame for Zhang’s death. He felt Liu Haisu, as the headmaster of the Shanghai art school, was very unfair to Zhang Xian by not offering a livable salary. The dispute ultimately broke the friendship between Liu Haisu and Fu lei for twenty years.
Zhang Xian’s face was very dark skinned, and it often surprised people to learn he was originally from the lower Yangzi River area. He usually kept silent, but once he talked, he also had a sense of humor. His words made people laugh. However, he often stayed in his room mixing all kinds of different colors on the canvas like crimson, light green, cinnabar, light yellow …to practice his new ideas. He was a unique artist whose sketches paralleled those of Xu Beihong. Fu Lei once remarked that in front of Zhang’s landscape painting you could feel a silence from the canvas like a lonely flower standing in the desert expressing the melancholy attributed to the poet Chopin. In his figure paintings, sometimes you could also perceive a sense of endless desolation that contrasted with his lucid and delightful painting manners.
In 1932 Zhang Xian successively became a member of the "Muse Society" and the" Storm Society". Between 1932 to 1935 he completed a large amount of paintings and sketches. Most of his works were sold at his post-humous exhibition in 1937. The sketch "Hero and Beauty" was purchased by his student Wang Qi who later contributed this sketch to the China National Museum of Fine Art. (pic.1) The Liu Haisu Art Museum also owns several of Zhang’s works including five landscape paintings and one portrait painting painted between 1932 and 1935.(pic.2-7)
Although it’s rare to find anything written by Zhang Xian, we definitely can perceive the painter’s artistic soul from his paintings.