In the Hermitage, it will be possible to see pictures made of ashes

The world famous Chinese artist Zhang Huan is ready to donate his work to the Hermitage.

Zhang Huan is one of China’s largest contemporary artists. He lived and worked in the USA, later returned to his homeland. In the 1990s, he was engaged in performances, then concentrated on painting. He won worldwide fame with paintings and sculptures made from ashes from burning incense in Buddhist temples. Solo exhibitions of Zhang Huan were held in New York, Shanghai, Paris, Los Angeles, Florence, London, and other art capitals of the world.

He created a series of paintings about the pandemic under the influence of Ilya Repin and was impressed by the exposition of Russia at the Venice Biennale. The painter told about this during the preparation of his solo exhibition “In the Ashes of History” in the Hermitage, which will open after the museum resumes work.

The Hermitage exhibition will feature about 30 of his works. 26 works of them were created directly for this museum. My Hermitage, Revolution of Rebirth, Buddha of the Hermitage, and the Palace of 10,000 Souls deserve a special mentioning. The Hermitage will be able to choose one of them and make it part of its collection.

Along with other works in St. Petersburg, his new series Love, dedicated to the pandemic, will be exhibited. At the moment, the Love series combines 12 completed works. They depict a skull chopped by a hammer. Red is his basic color. Creating this series, the artist wanted to say that we are obliged to show more love for the future world and people of the future.

Faced with the epidemic, people felt powerless and their own insignificance. Therefore, he overestimated, rethought his attitude to humanity and to himself. The same thing happened with his attitude to his own work. In this regard, in the next two months, he is going to go to Tibet and learn a completely new creative method.

In his work, Zhang Huan has always paid attention to the problems of life and death. The artist has always been updating and improving his technical methods.