45 Facts About Feng Zikai

Feng Zikai was an influential Chinese painter, pioneering manhua artist, essayist, and lay Buddhist of 20th-century China.

Feng Zikai's stubbornness manifested in determination to pursue his own interests, most notably drawing and painting.

Feng Zikai stole pigments and dyes from the family store and colored in many of the illustrations, earning him his father's scolding and punishment.

Shortly after his father's death from tuberculosis in 1906, Feng Zikai happened upon a book of figures, and practiced tracing and drawing figures, using the book as his guide and reference.

Feng Zikai continued to pursue his obsession with tracing figures throughout elementary school, earning a growing reputation as the "Little Artist".

In 1914, Feng Zikai traveled to Hangzhou to enroll in the Zhejiang First Normal School, where his career in art took off.

Furthermore, Feng Zikai's mother wished to see him follow in his father's footsteps, still hoping that the civil service examinations would be reinstated.

Feng Zikai entered the school with aspirations to become a teacher, but the school, led by principal Jing Hengyi, emphasized moral and artistic education.

From Li, Feng Zikai learned the importance of combining moral character with artistic accomplishment.

In contrast to Feng Zikai's parents, Li encouraged him to pursue his artistic instinct and later was a profound religious influence on him.

Feng Zikai was newly married to Xu Limin, the daughter of a prominent family from Suzhou, and his mother was sick.

Two of her former classmates started an art school, and shortly after graduation, Feng Zikai moved to Shanghai to work as an art teacher.

Feng Zikai believed that a new art articulated by modern educated cultural activists was key to reviving Chinese culture and artistic modes of expression.

In light of all the artists and teachers who had studied abroad, Feng Zikai felt he could not claim the title of a modern artist.

Feng Zikai devoted his time to Japanese and European art, as well as attempting to learn violin, English, Japanese, and Russian.

Feng Zikai immersed himself in Kabuki theater performances, old bookstores, research groups, and reading groups.

Feng Zikai later cited Takehisa Yumeji, whose work he first encountered in Tokyo, as a major figure in his intellectual development.

Feng Zikai was ill at ease in this job, and when political movements clashed, he took it as an out and quit.

Feng Zikai became involved in the burgeoning political movements of his time.

Feng Zikai taught art and worked as a cover designer and illustrator at the Kaiming Book Company as well as for other publishers.

The most important journal the company published for young adults was The Juvenile Student, and as an editor and primary contributor to the journal, Feng Zikai disseminated his artwork, his concern for humanitarianism, and his aesthetic thought to many young students.

Feng Zikai continued writing, painting, and publishing in various capacities throughout the changes in the Chinese sociopolitical landscape.

Feng Zikai's artwork stands out as unique, especially compared other artists of his time.

Feng Zikai chose to not represent the Japanese antagonists as monsters or inhuman, but rather to focus on war's objective tragedies and the suffering it wreaks on ordinary people.

Feng Zikai was a refugee during the war, having to flee his home, Yuanyuan Hall, but he remained committed to his ideals of universal humanism and compassion, as opposed to building nationalism against the Japanese aggressors.

Feng Zikai kept in close contact with Li Shutong until his death in 1942.

At the time, Feng Zikai was living in Hangzhou and frequently conversed with Ma Yifu, a prominent Neo-Confucian thinker and scholar.

Feng Zikai asserts that Feng was not "remolded" despite various reeducation attempts, but maintained his old beliefs and ideals even though he faced immense social and political pressure to become less "bourgeois".

Zhou invited Feng Zikai to write a preface to the anthology, which the artist was wary of, in case he accidentally overstepped his bounds.

Also in 1954, Feng Zikai was invited into the public scene and granted prominent positions in artistic and literary circles.

Feng Zikai was offered membership on the Standing Committee of the national Chinese Artists' Association and vice presidency of the regional Shanghai branch.

Feng Zikai helped run various high schools in Shanghai and enjoyed social prominence during the Hundred Flowers period.

In 1958, Feng Zikai was almost labeled a "Rightist", but avoided controversy by lying low.

Feng Zikai believed in the ideology, but felt the Party did not truly care for ordinary people.

Feng Zikai painted much of the Paintings for the Preservation of Life after 1949, first collaborating with Hong Yi before his death, and then afterward, in contact with Guangqia, a Singaporean monk who helped publish them outside Mainland China.

Feng Zikai died on September 9,1975, after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

Feng Zikai combined this with a similar concept in Buddhism, and asserted that only one who has a childlike heart can truly see the world for what it is and act rightly.

Feng Zikai's philosophy finds parallels in Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and other post-Kantian European philosophers who have noted a connection among art, play, work, and children.

Feng Zikai witnessed the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the rise and fall of the Republican China, and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as European and Japanese imperialism in China.

Feng Zikai believed that the failures of the various political systems were symptoms of a greater issue: lack of compassion or a sense of morality outside political agendas.

Feng Zikai critiqued many social injustices and hypocrisies, such as lack of filial piety, the innumerable people living in poverty, and the use of Chinese Buddhist ritual for 'transactional karma'.

Feng Zikai believed that people did not truly understand the heart of the issue, and encouraged us to look to children.

Feng Zikai was a prolific publisher of paintings, essays, and translations.

Feng Zikai's works include Writings from Yuanyuan Hall, Paintings for the Preservation for Life, A Collection of Feng Zikai Manhua, a biography of Vincent Van Gogh, and a translation of The Tale of Genji.

Feng Zikai illustrated some of Lu Xun's works, such as The True Story of Ah Q, and delivered a series of lectures of Western Classical music, focusing on Russian composers post-Tchaikovsky.