Title

Chinese woodcuts of the thirties and forties.

Venues

ANU Drill Hall Exhibition Room (1 July 1987 – 30 August 1987)

Date

(1987)

Summary

Multi-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (ACT). Prints.

Curator

Christine Dixon, Department of International Prints and Illustrated Books, Australian National Gallery

Web address

https://nga.gov.au/exhibitions/chinese-woodcuts-o…

Countries of context

Australia | China

Abstract

During the 1930s and 1940s in the strife-torn nation of China, a renaissance in woodblock printing occurred. Modern western images were introduced, imitated, digested or rejected. Local traditions of printmaking were revived, joining with or replacing new European ideas. The resulting works combined foreign and native influences in a coherent, original way. These two decades of political and cultural change saw a dramatic flowering of the art of the woodcut.

The world's oldest surviving print is a woodblock Buddhist text, a Diamond Sutra of 868 AD, made in China during the Tang dynasty. More than a thousand years of cutting woodblocks culminated in brilliant achievements in Ming and early Qing times, from about 1300 to 1750 AD. Such works were produced by craftspeople working from artists' drawings.

By the early twentieth century, Western photomechanical processes of reproduction, mainly lithographic, had all but replaced the old ways of printing text and illustrations. Traditional methods were used primarily for printing nian hua (New Year pictures), brightly coloured religious charms and decorations for windows and doors.

[National Gallery of Australia media, 2024].

The prints in the exhibition are mainly from the Peter Townsend Collection purchased by the Gallery in 1985.

Last Updated

02 Sep 2024