Early Life
Zhang was born the son of a gardener in 1907 in Xujiahui (Ziccawei), then a suburb of Shanghai, China. The young Zhang lost both his parents at an early age and grew up in the French jesuit orphanage of Tou-Se-we (now Tushanwan) where he entered at the age of seven, and where he learned French. He then entered the Art School of the orphanage, where he learned to draw, and was systematically educated in Western art. After finishing school in 1928, Zhang worked with design for the film industry and at a local newspaper. In 1931, he left China for the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Belgium.
Read more about this topic: Zhang Chongren
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)