CHINESE WOODCUTS.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Woodcuts of War-Time China 1937-1945. First edition of this bilingual catalogue based on a landmark exhibition held in Shanghai from 18 September to 3 October 1946. The works took as their theme the suffering and the determination of ordinary people. In his introductory essay, Ye Shengtao - a vanguard May Fourth intellectual - extols the art of woodcutting as a tool of resistance and national unity in the face of imperial aggression. The work represents 70 of the 113 participating artists, among them Li Hua (1907-1994) and the prominent Communist base-area artist Gu Yuan (1919-1996), whose depiction of a rural divorce court is characteristically expressive. The volume is dedicated to Lu Xun, the doyen of Chinese modernism who, more than any other intellectual, stimulated the development of the art form in 20th-century China.

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