Object Details
Artist
Xu Wenhua
Date
1965
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Canvas: 32 1/2 × 33 1/2 inches (82.6 × 85.1 cm)
Frame: 37 × 38 inches (94 × 96.5 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Andrew Byong-Soo Kim, MBA 1963, and Wan Kyun Rha Kim
Object
Number
2004.038.001
With the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China’s European-trained realist painte(…)
With the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China’s European-trained realist painters were assigned to create a new art for the new nation, for the purpose of serving the masses. At first the Socialist Realist style focused on heroic depictions of the nation’s leaders, but after widespread famine in the late 1950s, a shift in subject matter occurred, and artists began to glorify ordinary people. Xu Wenhua’s work typifies the trend in oil painting in the mid-1960s, showing enthusiasm for the cult of Mao Zedong that would fuel the Cultural Revolution. Xu also gained fame for his political poster designs. From 1979 to 1985 he taught art at the Shanghai Light Industrial Design Institute. In 1986 he moved to New York.
