He works in a variety of media such as painting (sometimes with soy sauce), sculpture, collage, ceramics, digital imaging and installation.
These themes are largely derived from his "outsider" standing as a Muslim in China and, after his move to the United States, as a Chinese citizen in the Western world.
In 1987 he took part in the founding of The Chinese United Overseas Artists Association, along with Li Shuang, Qu Leilei, Ai Weiwei.
From 1947 to 1950, with the Chinese civil war raging, Hongtu's father mobilized his family, moving them from Pingliang in the northwest to Shanghai, Suzhou, and Nanjing, and then north to Zhengzhou.
Before the communist defeat, Zhang Bingduo intended to escape with his family to Hong Kong, but was convinced to move to Beijing by a Muslim professor.
At its outset, the Muslim Association was disbanded, greatly disillusioning Zhang Hongtu's father, who refused to re-accept his job when the Cultural Revolution finally ended in 1976.
[3] In 1960, when Hongtu was sixteen years old, he began his studies at the high school attached to Beijing's prestigious Central Academy of Arts.
So Hongtu and five friends, including artist Yu Youhan, used the historical "Long March" as a model, crossing the countryside by foot and using their art on behalf of the current political movement.
[3] Looking back on the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Hongtu has said, "I had to criticize my own painting... One friend who was so good toward me but really was just spying checked out my diary without telling me, to see how badly I hated the Communist Party.
"[3] Although Hongtu's education was brought to an end in 1966, his class still officially graduated and was sent to the countryside near Shijiazhuang to work in the rice fields.
The last two years they spend in the fields, they were allowed to produce art on Sundays and stored their painting tools and materials in the baskets used for collecting cow dung.
In 1981, Zhang suggested to his supervisors that they send him to the Buddhist cave paintings at Dunhuang to gather design ideas for jewelry making.
The attention he received for his works at the exhibition led Zhang to request permission to change jobs, but his file would not be released by the Jewelry Company.
In three days, the jewelry design company gave him permission to travel to New York City and study at the Art Students League.
This was the birth of his Long Live Chairman Mao Series[3] This particular artwork became one of the first of China's "political pop" movement that helped launch Contemporary Chinese painting into its current popularity.
[4] It marked the beginning of what Jerome Silbergeld notes as "a long romance between Chinese and Western icons" in Zhang Hongtu's work.
[3] Shortly after the Events at Tiananmen Square in 1989, Zhang Hongtu painted the Last Banquet, which satirized Chairman Mao's deification and the revered writings of the Little Red Book.
[3] Both the Long Live Chairman Mao Series and the Last Banquet set the stage for his later works, which reached back into his personal history.
In a series of cut-outs from the early 1990s, he also includes images of Buddha, the crucifixion of Christ, the cross, the holy trinity, ionic columns, traditional Chinese book bound with thread, and the Great Wall.
These unfilled images are surrounded by materials such as oil, rice, grass, MSG, soy sauce, cement, nails and corns etc.
He began producing oil paintings in the late 1990s, using compositions of Chinese landscapes and executed them in the styles of European Impressionists.
[6] Repainting Shanshui is a series that Zhang Hongtu began in 1998 to explore the parody of values and conventions of Chinese and Western art.
The Saatchi Gallery, which housed an exhibition of Zhang Hongtu's work, notes that "The uncanny resemblance between communist leader and puritan farmer ironically confuses propaganda, religion, and ideology with the kitsch of advertising and cult of personality; like Elvis and Jesus, once you start looking Mao can be found everywhere.
2004 Selected work, William Holland & Drury Gallery, Marlboro College, Vermont 2003 Icon & Innovations: The Cross-Cultural Art of Zhang Hongtu, The Gibson Gallery, State University of New York at Potsdam 2002 Paris-Pekin, Espace Cardin, Paris ConversASIAN, National Gallery, Cayman Island 2000 New Paintings, Cheryl McGinnis Gallery, New York 1996 Soy Sauce, Lipstick, Charcoal, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Chairmen Mao, Groton School, Massachusetts 1995 Zhang Hongtu: Material Mao, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York 1994 The Fifth Biennial of Havana, Cuba Small World - Small Works, Galerie + Edition Caoc, Berlin, Germany 1982 The Spirit of Dunhuang, Asian Arts Institute, New York