Like other artists from his time period, Zhu Qizhan did not achieve fame until later in his life; and though Zhu came to accept and enjoy the byproducts of his renown, they were always secondary to that which was most important to him: his work.
Born to a wealthy family in 1892 in Taicang, Jiangsu Province, Zhu Qizhan began studying Chinese painting with a private tutor at the age of seven. In his twenties he became a professor at the Shanghai Arts Academy, and then later traveled to Japan where he studied Western-style oil painting, and was heavily influenced by European painters such as Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, and Cezanne. This influence can be seen even in Zhu's later works.
Zhu's blending of Western and Eastern influences, techniques, color usage, and style demonstrates his mastery of both ink and oil painting, and is symbolic of his lifelong quest to be consistently growing and developing as an artist. Just as amazing is the perpetually changing time during which Zhu continued to find a way do his work and improve upon his craft.
For Zhu's life spanned one of the most tumultuous centuries in China's vast history. He lived through the Boxer Rebellion in 1898, the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, China's civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists during the 1920s and '30s, the Sino-Japanese war and World War II, the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Zedong's persecution of artists and intellectuals and all things 'old' during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and well into China's contemporary age of economic and social development in the 1980s and '90s.
Zhu's mark on Chinese painting is significant as he bridges the discipline and philosophy of traditional Chinese painting into a new age. Admired and respected by connoisseurs and artists alike, by the late 1980s Zhu had already outlived many of his contemporaries. But by that point Zhu's free-flowing style, best known for his bold and decisive brushwork as well as his vibrant and daring use of color, had found a new audience with a younger generation, and so his popularity and influence only continued to grow.
In his later years, Zhu's work became widely sought after and was exhibited to great fanfare in Europe and the United States as his fame spanned the globe; fittingly so, as Zhu was one who loved to travel. He visited New York City in 1986, where his work was exhibited and where he saw for the first time the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Modern Museum of Art. He was amazed, astounded, overjoyed by the experience.
Zhu Qizhan died on April 22, 1996, at the age of 105. He is remembered as a man who lived like the willow tree, bending but never breaking, simply swaying beautifully and naturally, always adapting to the wind.
