Zhaxi

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Zhaxi, Male, Tibetan, from Tibet, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Tibetan Thangka (Ⅶ-14). The tradition is documented in Tibet. Within the regional tradition and school record of Tibetan Thangka in Tibet: The Khyenri school takes the Shigatse and Shannan areas of Tsang (western Tibet) as its center of distribution; its style can be seen in the temple murals and thangkas of Gyantse, Sakya, Gonggar, and other places. The Khyenri school was practiced in Tsang (western Tibet) and the Shannan area after the mid-15th century; its founder was Gonggar Gangdru Khyenri Chemu.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Born in May 1963 in Naidong County, Tibet Autonomous Region, he is of Tibetan ethnicity. In 1980 he entered the art class of the Shannan Prefecture Normal School, where he studied Tibetan traditional folk art and the painting techniques of the Chenrezig school of thangka systematically under Cairang Duoji, a thangka painter of that school. After graduating in 1989 he was assigned to the Shannan Prefecture Art Troupe, where he worked alongside Cairang Duoji and continued to study under him. Through more than thirty years of study and unremitting research he has gained a systematic command of Chenrezig school thangka painting. His work Padmasambhava (Lianhuasheng) and others have taken part in Chinese cultural exchange activities in Nigeria, Nepal and other countries. His representative works include The Three Longevity Buddhas (San Zun Shou Fo). Within the documented technical tradition of Tibetan Thangka in Tibet: From childhood he loved art; building on traditional Tibetan Nepalese-style painting, he absorbed painting techniques from the Han regions of the Central Plains, India, and elsewhere, founding the Khyenri school. The emergence of the Khyenri and Mentang schools put an end to the Nepalese painting style previously practiced in U-Tsang. The Khyenri school retains the Tibetan Nepalese painting characteristic of large central figures in composition, but in landscape representation it began to absorb the painting style of the Han regions; it is especially skilled at depicting wrathful figures with a masculine beauty, executed with superb brilliance. The founder of the Khyenri school, Gonggar Gangdru Khyenri Chemu, painted for many years in the Gonggar and Sakya areas, and his disciples formed the earliest community of transmitters of the Khyenri school. Khyenri school figures have a strong sense of realism; drapery lines are mostly drawn with the iron-wire technique, and the coloring favors rich, intense reds and blues; the flames and curling beards of wrathful dharmapalas are rendered with particular brilliance. The Khyenri school coexisted with the Mentang school in U-Tsang; the style resulting from the fusion of the two was later called "Khyen-Mentang" (Mianqin) and became the mainstream method of Tibetan temple mural painting after the 15th century. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Gongkar Gongdun Khyentse Chenmo": Founder of the school: devoted to art from childhood, he absorbed Han Chinese and Indian techniques into the traditional Nepalese manner and founded the Khyentse style in the mid-fifteenth century in Tsang and Lhoka. "The martial beauty of the wrathful deities": The school keeps the large central deity of Nepalese composition but takes up Han landscape conventions and excels above all at wrathful figures, whose martial beauty it renders superbly. "Ending the Nepalese manner": With the rise of the Khyentse and Menthang schools the earlier Nepalese manner that had dominated Tsang came to an end, and a native Tibetan style was established. "Monastic murals of Tsang and Lhoka": The school worked chiefly in monastic murals and scroll paintings, leaving many works in the monasteries of Gyantse, Sakya and Gongkar and forming one of the two roots of later Tsang mural painting.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

He is a national representative bearer of Tibetan Thangka (Chenrezig school), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. To safeguard and transmit the techniques of the Chenrezig school, he has trained more than twenty disciples since 2004.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Zhaxi · National Representative Bearer Archive