Still an elusive yet fascinating painter, Carlo Zanon was born in Schio in 1889. At a very young age he arrived in Milan, entering the circle of Alberto Grubicy and becoming close to Segantini and Previati. His abilities emerged immediately and, seized by a desire to follow in the footsteps of Van Gogh and Gauguin, he arrived first in Auvers sur Oise, then in Brittany and then in Paris (1918-19) where he painted animals, birds and flowers in the Jardin des plantes. Starting from 15 January 1931 he moved to China - making his first landing in Shanghai - with his wife, perhaps thanks to the advice of painters such as Chang Yu, Chinese in Paris, where he had enormous success.
Here he became a friend of many artists and significantly influenced the art of his contemporary painters, in particular Xu Beihong, perhaps the most important Chinese realist painter of the twentieth century.
Zanon's style, especially in his early years, is strongly in line with pointillist achievements, leading him to compete without fear with the most acclaimed painters of the time, and the discovery of this monumental painting demonstrates the level at which he managed to express himself.
A bituminous painting, full of matter, which does not give up the typical filaments of the most innovative style of the epoch, and the strong Vangoghian ancestry demonstrate the need to put the figure of Carlo Zanon back at the center, a painter to be rediscovered.

Cfr. Zaixin Hong, Multiculturalism and Modernism: an Italian artist-collector Carlo Zanon's adventure in China (1928-1937), Studi Artistici, n. 7, November 2010, pp. 1-38.