Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Liu Zhide was the local Communist Party official for the area of Quyuhe in Shaanxi province. The slogan on the hillside reads ‘In agriculture learn from Dazhai’. Dazhai was a model production brigade in Shanxi province, held up as a pacesetter in agriculture. The phrase beneath the image says that it is selected from the Huxian Peasant Painting Exhibition. The Huxian People’s Commune in Shaanxi province was renowned for the peasant paintings produced there during the Cultural Revolution. With professional assistance from artists who had been sent down from the countryside the peasants learnt to make highly-coloured folk images appropriately devoid of western influence or bourgeois traits. These were hailed as new populist art created by and for the people.