Artwork Description

Title: Water Lily
Artist: Zheng Ziyan (鄭子燕)
Date: 1975
Medium: Oil
Dimensions: 10.0 x 7.6 in (25.5 x 19.3 cm)

1. Artwork Identification:
Rendered with soft brushwork and vibrant coloration, Water Lily presents a tranquil pond scattered with lily pads and flecks of yellow blossoms. The scene captures a quiet moment of stillness and beauty, likely observed from life yet filtered through an introspective lens. The composition balances organic rhythm and poetic restraint, with slight abstraction lending the subject a sense of dreamlike serenity.

2. Artistic Style and Influences:
The work exemplifies Zheng Ziyan’s subtle fusion of realism and lyrical abstraction. The artist’s painterly treatment of the lily pads and the loosely articulated water surface recall the modernist impulse to distill nature into pure shape and color. Her use of vivid greens, earthy browns, and golden highlights evokes the emotional palettes of early Chinese oil painters influenced by European Impressionism, yet filtered through the artist’s distinctly personal and reflective vision.

3. Historical Context:
Painted in 1975 during the final years of the Cultural Revolution, Water Lily emerges from a time when artists in China were beginning to quietly resist the orthodoxy of state-controlled art. As a member of the No Name Group—an underground collective that championed artistic freedom and individual expression—Zheng Ziyan worked outside official institutions to create introspective and quietly radical images. Her decision to depict the everyday and the poetic in nature was a subtle but potent form of defiance.

4. Provenance:
Provenance documentation can be provided upon contact.

5. Condition and Conservation:
The artwork is in very good condition. The colors remain vivid, with no signs of discoloration or surface damage. The frame and matting are clean and archival.

6. Artistic Significance:
Water Lily is emblematic of Zheng Ziyan’s refined sensibility and her role within one of the most important artist collectives in 20th-century Chinese art history. Her work resists grand narrative or political slogan in favor of intimate and meditative observation, signaling the emergence of a new kind of painterly consciousness in China. This piece stands as a testament to the quiet courage and poetic power of artists who chose introspection over ideology.