Zhu's works show lusty embrace of life
Zhu Xinjian (1953-2014) said he once decorated his scrapbook with a painting by Qi Baishi (1864-1957), which he cut out from newspapers, together with a photo of naked women. By doing so, he wished to use the free, lofty brushwork of Chinese painting, which ancient literati employed to portray landscape and aloofness, to express lust as a fundamental desire of mankind that earlier painters normally shunned.
Considered shameless by some and genuine by others, Zhu had painted human's basic needs, sex in particular, for more than two decades. He is most famous for portraying nude modern beauties with rough - sometimes exaggerated - strokes of ink.
A representative of the "New Literati Painting" movement, he stripped the hypocrisy and pretense of literati painting traditions and enlivened the art school with a playful and down-to-earth approach.