Mr. Zhang Zijun was born in a family of calligraphy and painting, and he was good at painting when he was young. He studied calligraphy with his uncle Wang Zhiguang (secretary of patriotic general Yang Hucheng and a famous calligrapher) and laid a solid foundation for calligraphy and painting. In his early years, he followed Mr. Zhang Yiqian, the leader of Chang 'an Painting School. He inherited the family background of the sages, advocated humanistic reading style and his bizarre life, which made his artistic growth full of challenges and persistence. During this period, he also went to Yongle Palace in Shanxi and the underground gallery of Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shihuang to create murals of figures. As an individual, Zhang Zijun insists on his own preferences and choices, and pursues the artistic style of "naturalness, simplicity and simplicity".
Murals are painted on special walls, with the same style as murals, and follow the artistic expression of traditional murals in China, so as to achieve the effect of antique paper carving. China's mural art has a long history. During the Yin and Zhou Dynasties, there were records of "paintings of palace walls". At that time, the characters were underdeveloped, so people made the great events of that time on the wall in the form of paintings, similar to the current "news photos."
A major change in mural painting is that later artists overcame its immovability and made it close to ordinary people from the wall, which has a history of more than 2,000 years and has the reputation of "moving Mogao Grottoes mural painting".
Zhang Zijun studied murals with Zhang Yiqian, a famous painting and calligraphy artist in Shaanxi. Because of his excellent painting skills, from 1992 to 1993, he and Liu Anhua, a famous mural designer, worked together as a simulation exhibition hall for the underground palace of the Qin Shihuang Mausoleum, designed murals and participated in the whole drawing process.
With the basic skills of mural painting, in order to learn mural painting, he went to Xi 'an Academy of Fine Arts for further study at his own expense and tried his best to find mural artists scattered among the people. After numerous experiments, he finally created his first mural on the basis of traditional murals in the spring of 2008.
Later, he incorporated some techniques of Fengxiang Liulin clay sculpture into it, further strengthening the texture toughness and picture color of Fengxiang murals. Nowadays, the mural paintings of Zhang Zijun, a peasant artist, have attracted wide attention from all walks of life for their solid artistic skills and unique creative techniques.
Zhang Zijun said that the preciousness of wall painting lies not only in the exquisite painting skills, but also in its unique and complicated material selection process and the production process of 13. It is reported that it takes about 20 days to create a work the size of A4 paper, and the finished product is exquisite, elegant and beautiful. Material selection: Fengxiang wall painting pays great attention to the wall skin, using eight natural materials such as black oil mixed soil, lime, black bean juice, alum (instead of pig blood), tofu, vegetable gum, fine cotton and spices. Among them, black oil mixed soil has good viscosity, and after a long period of precipitation and fermentation, the corrosive minerals in it are uniform.
Generally speaking, soil is not enough, at least clay is needed. Good cotton is selected to increase its strength and prevent cracking; White ash and spices can prevent the picture from moldy, while pig blood and tofu can make the picture more round and fresh, and its true principle is still unknown. If you don't add these ingredients to the wall skin, the picture quality will be poor.
Technology: raw materials are stirred into mud with water, and then broken with a mallet to achieve appropriate viscosity and hardness. Then roll it into 35 cm thick slices with a rolling pin, stick it on the earth wall and let it dry naturally in the shade. Then sealed and washed, that is, washed with white sealing mud, mixed with plant gum and plant oxalic acid, and brushed evenly for 3 times. Polished with fine sand, then coated with rice paper, adhered to the sealed and washed wall by hand, and dried in the shade. In this way, the wall skin is ready. Painting also goes through alum, drawing, coloring, powder fixing, gold plating, plate mounting, embroidery, packaging and other processes.
The depth of knowledge is the cutting of love. "With his love for art, his understanding and diligence, and his strong spirit of moral introspection, Mr. Zhang Zijun is establishing his own monument and position in the inheritance and development of figure painting in China, not for fame and fortune, not for return, but for great love for art, selfless return to society and the realm of figure painting.
Wang Gaimin, executive vice chairman and secretary general of Shaanxi Calligraphers Association, spoke highly of Zhang Zijun's works of art: "Painting landscapes is spring, and words are romantic".
Today, Mr. Zhang Zijun's Chinese paintings have been compiled into various newspapers and magazines, such as Who's Who in Contemporary Art in China, A Grand View of Painting and Calligraphy Appreciation in China, and Selected Works of World Celebrities. In addition, Zhang Zijun's works, Green Garden Full of Mountains and Poets of the Tang Dynasty, are collected by the state and other institutions in the Water Cube exhibition of Beijing National Tourism Center.