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Gu Yuan 古元

Winter Schooling, ca. 1942-44

Description

Maker

  • Gu Yuan 古元, 1919 - 1996, Chinese

Title

Winter Schooling

Year

ca. 1942-44

Medium

Woodblock print

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • ink

Techniques

  • wood block,
  • woodcut

Supports

  • paper

Place

China

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Prints

Credit

Gift of Colonel Marcellus and Emily Duffy

Object Number

1994.097.4

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Recent Acquisitions

February 18 - April 16, 2000

Beginning in the 1920s, Chinese artists of the intellectual left revived and reformatted the traditional art of woodblock printing, which had been used for a millennium in popular secular and religious works and for book illustrations. By combining native practice with influences from the West, especially those of German Expressionists like Kathe Kollwitz, they produced powerful social and political commentaries on the contemporary Chinese scene.

These prints are part of a group of 16 presented to Colonel Marcellus Duffy in 1945 (?) during his stay in Yan'an, the Communist stronghold and base of operations in the northwest. It was from this center that Mao Zedong launched his campaign for the Communist take-over of China between 1945 and 1949. By this time, the woodcut medium had become a significant political tool for the Communist Party. These are the first examples of modem Chinese prints from this period to enter the Museum's collection. Their thematic relation to Western polemical printmaking makes them a nice complement to the Museum's extensive holding of politically inspired works in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Winter Schooling with the accession number of 1994.097.4. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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