Back in 1992 or so, there were two styles implied in Zeng Fanzhi’s creative work. One was expressionism, the other was abstraction. Against the context of contemporary art in the 1990s, the artist independently chose the expressionist style.

For people who are familiar with Chinese contemporary painting, Zeng Fanzhi’s success is closely associated with his mature expressionist style and with his attention to the subject matter of mortality. In these works, the directness of the language of oil painting as such, the sense of speed in the paintings and the unique concern of a young life with death, disease and suffering, have won him critical acclaim.

(Pi Li, From Moral Confrontation to Creative Confrontation – A Little Analysis of Zeng Fanzhi’s Paintings 1989-2004, 2006 [Extract])