This rare lithograph in colors by Zhang Xiaogang is edition 84 of 88, loose as issued and in excellent condition.

Chinese Contemporary artist Zhang Xiaogang's paintings and prints continue to set records on the primary and secondary markets. This stunning print depicts black ink that has spilled across a hand-written letter half-finished, with a solitary, bare light-bulb hanging above, shining a fragmented yellow glow onto this scene. This is a surreal and sublime example of the imagery and compositions that make the works of Zhang among the most sought-after Chinese Contemporary works, world-wide. This offset lithograph in colors belongs to his iconic "Amnesia and Memory" portfolio that includes a stunning range of rare and poignant figural and representational images. Zhang Xiaogang is best known for these sombre yet somehow dreamy and poignant, depictions of people and objects, that all express the homogeneity and collectively Zhang saw as hallmarks of his time as a young child in China.

The artist was born in China in 1958, and was eight years old at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. The painted portraits and objects that occupied his home-life, become steeped in an air of memory, nostalgia and loss. This print can be considered a type of conceptual self-portrait of Zhang, who often depicts written letters or hand to page in his work for very personal reasons. During the dangerous and turbulent time of his childhood in China, the artist’s mother insisted he learn to draw in order to keep him inside as much as possible, and encouraged his letter writing and penmanship.

Far from the original intention of hiding him from the world, this practice led Zhang Xiaogang to become indisputably one of the most recognizable and significant Contemporary Chinese artist today, and he has enjoyed this status since the earliest days of the international art market in China. A painting by the artist just set a record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a Contemporary Chinese painting. The artist lives and works in China.