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

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Heroes and Heroines Are All Aroundfront

© The artist

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Heroes and Heroines Are All Around

  • Description

    This print presents a harvest scene during the Cultural Revolution, when young intellectuals from cities settled in remote countryside to be ‘re-educated’ by farmers. The title is from a poem by Mao. Inspired by the prints of Chao Mei, the artist voluntarily applied to go to the Great Northern Wilderness region to be an agricultural worker. Zhang was trained in Western art during his study in the Middle School attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. From the late 1970s, Zhang’s prints gradually discarded the influence of propaganda and began to depict female figures with classical beauty.

  • Details

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    Associated place
    Asia › China (place of creation)
    Date
    1970
    Artist/maker
    Zhang Chaoyang (born 1945) (printmaker)
    after Mao Zedong (Chairman Mao) (1893 - 1976) (author)
    Material and technique
    multi-block woodcut, printed with oil-based ink
    Dimensions
    mount 68.6 x 50.8 cm (height x width)
    sheet 41.2 x 58.5 cm (height x width)
    print 33.5 x 49 cm (height x width)
    Material index
    processed material › paper
    Technique index
    printed › relief print › woodcut › colour woodcut
    Object type index
    visual representation › print
    No. of items
    1
    Credit line
    Purchased, 2007.
    Accession no.
    EA2007.90

  • Further reading

    Weimin He, and Shelagh Vainker, Chinese Prints 1950-2006 in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2007), no. 44 on p. 53, illus. p. 53

Past Exhibition

see (1)

Location

    • 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

  • Chinese Prints 1950-2006 in the Ashmolean Museum by Weimin He and Shelagh Vainker

    Chinese Prints 1950-2006 in the Ashmolean Museum

    Beauty and freedom have been the goal of my aesthetic pursuit.

    Zhang Chaoyang graduated from the Middle School attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, in 1964. The same year, inspired by Chao Mei’s (q.v.) prints, he voluntarily applied to go to the Great Northern Wilderness region and worked in 853 State Farm until the late 1980s, when he was appointed as a professional artist, and worked in the Heilongjiang Artists’ Association. His early woodcuts reflect his revolutionary passion, but from the late 1970s, his prints gradually discarded the influence of propaganda and began to depict female figures with classical beauty. Using water-soluble colour printing techniques, he created rich and subtle tones and made the woodcut comparable to painting. Recently he has used etching to depict nudes, a subject matter he underpins with symbolic meaning.

© 2013 University of Oxford - Ashmolean Museum