Composition

Maxime Zhang was born in 1967 in Quingtian, China. He is a painter and photographer, he chose France to live and express his art.

Maxime Zhang is inspired by the abstraction of Western painters and he mixes aspects of the art of his ancestors, especially from the Song and Tang period. His painting can be described as spiritual.

He arrived in Paris in 1983, settling in a country where Chu Teh-Chun and Zao Wou-Ki had arrived before him. Like these two great painters, Maxime Zhang chose to become French.

He began to be an artist through photography. In his artistic practice, he is quickly attracted by the light, this last one will push him to turn to the painting. Maxime Zhang's painting is in line with what the art critic John Ruskin said when he spoke of painting as: "a meditative love of nature".

Zhang's painting is a journey for the senses, his landscapes are a kind of experimental field, landscapes in full metamorphosis. Maxime Zhang pays particular attention to the backgrounds of his paintings which are worked with binders that strengthen the oil paint.

The content of his painting is often in movement, one feels a very particular energy and he does not hesitate to confront hot colors with cold colors. His painting is soft and poetic, it invites us to a spiritual journey. The Chinese cosmogony is at the heart of his art, indeed, we find the yin and yang with the darkness confronted with the light. Maxime Zhang perpetuates the legacy left by his masters, Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh-Chun.

In 2018, a book entitled Maxime Zhang - The Spirit of Painting was published by Somogy. Lydia Harambourg and Gerard Xuriguera wrote about the artist in this beautiful book.

"When people ask me why I paint, I answer that art is part of the process of life. It emerges from it and returns to it." Maxime Zhang

Maxime Zhang's exhibitions:

February 2019 - Salon Art Capital, Salon des Artistes Indépendants, Grand Palais (Paris) - Painting

February 2018 - Salon Art Capital, Salon des Artistes Indépendants, Grand Palais (Paris) - Painting

January 2018 - Exhibition, Li Shiu International Art Museum (China) - Painting and Photography

October 2017 - Exhibition, Xi'an International Art Museum (China) - Painting and Photography

October 2017 - Salon d'Automne, (Paris)

September 2017 - Exhibition, Inter Art Centre and Gallery, Espace 798 (Beijing)

February 2017 - Exhibition Art Capital, Salon des Artistes Indépendants, Grand Palais (Paris) - Painting

January 2017 - Exhibition, City Hall of the 3rd Arrondissement of Paris

October 2016 - Exhibition "West Lake in the Eyes of Foreigners", Hangzhou (China)

September 2016 - International Exhibition Large Format, Pingyao (China)

February 2016 - Exhibition, Patronage Laïque Jules Vallès (Paris)

November 2014 - Exhibition, Centre d'Art et de Création d'Aulnay-sous-Bois - Photography

September 2014 - International Exhibition, Espace Pierre Cardin (Paris)

November 2012 - Exhibition, Centre Culturel de Chine (Paris) - Photography

February 2011 - Exhibition, City Hall of the XIth Arrondissement of Paris - Photography