Art in China in the 1960s and 1970s
(from 15th Apr 2011 until 15th Jan 2012)Explore woodblock prints and ink paintings from around the period of the Cultural Revolution in China.
Golden Sea
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Description
This print records how during the Cultural Revolution, school graduates followed Mao’s call to ‘receive re-education from poor and lower-middle peasants’ and settled in the countryside to become state farmers. Schematic smiling is a typical symbol of that period. The artist was one of the ‘intellectual youths’ sent from the city to the remote Great Northern Wilderness state farm, where under the direction of Hao Boyi, she began to create woodcuts together with a group of other intellectual youths from different parts of China.
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Details
- Associated place
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Asia › China › Heilongjiang province (possible place of creation)
- Date
- 1972
- Artist/maker
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Zhao Xiaomo (born 1949) (printmaker)
- Material and technique
- multi-block woodcut, printed with oil-based ink
- Dimensions
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sheet 37.5 x 109.3 cm (height x width)
print 25.2 x 89.2 cm (height x width)
- Material index
- Technique index
- Object type index
- No. of items
- 1
- Credit line
- Purchased, 2007.
- Accession no.
- EA2007.79
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Further reading
Weimin He, and Shelagh Vainker, Chinese Prints 1950-2006 in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2007), no. 45 on p. 54, illus. p. 54
Past Exhibition
see (1)
Location
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- currently in research collection
Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.
Publications online
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Chinese Prints 1950-2006 in the Ashmolean Museum
As long as the fire in our heart does not die, it will guide us to a brighter journey. (Written in 1975)
Zhao Xiaomo graduated from the Middle School attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1969. In the same year, as an ‘intellectual youth’, Zhao was sent to the Beidahuang state farm in Heilongjiang where she began to create woodcuts together with a group of other intellectual youths from across China, under the direction of Hao Boyi (q.v.). In 1978, Zhao was recruited as a postgraduate student in the CAFA’s Printmaking Department. After her graduation in 1980, she worked for the People’s Fine Arts Publishing House in Beijing for two decades, and later acted as an editor of Chinese Printmaking. Zhao’s early woodcuts reflect the strong influence of Soviet socialist realist style, whilst since the early 1980s, her interest has changed to folk style Chinese ink painting.
Notice
Objects from past exhibitions may have now returned to our stores or a lender. Click into an individual object record to confirm whether or not an object is currently on display. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis, so please contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular Eastern Art object.
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