Chinese Artists Chen Yuping, Hao Boyi, Hu Yongkai, Zhou Sheng Hua

I now have over 150 blog followers who subscribe to my blog and get notified each time I post something, you too can sign up using the button on the right of my post under the prompt ‘Follow Blog Via Email’. One of these followers has a blog which I also follow called Cuaderno de Retazos or Patchwork Notebook as the translation goes. They have an amazing knowledge of Eastern art and a huge listing of Chinese Artists whom I know very little about. I decided to look into the work of just a couple for today’s post.

The first being the work of  Zhou Sheng Hua He is one of the most famous chinese modern woodcut artists. He’s part of  The Great Northern Wilderness School of Prints.  Sadly he passed away when he was only 49.

He has amazing control over his lines and a keen understanding and appreciation of the landscape that surrounds him. Looking at these prints you gather a sense of the solitude and silence that accompanies this way of life.

The next artist is Chen Yuping, born in 1947, and who came to art quite late in his life.

He had studied Hydraulic Engineering and worked as a hydraulic technician in the transformation of the “Great Northern Waste Land” into an agricultural centre. In 1973, he had begun to dabble in printmaking and in 1983 the hobby turned into his new profession, after he had completed a course in printmaking at the CAFA (Chinese Academy of Fine Arts) in Beijing. Since then, he has made his way inside and outside of China.

His usual edition is around 100, relatively high for a printmaking artist in China, where a commercial market has not been existing until only a few years ago. It shows the appreciation that he has been enjoying in China and elsewhere since the 1980s. His work uses such strong and vivid colours. Chen Yuping works in the traditional woodblock technique and uses oil-based inks.

The next artist is Hao Boyi who is the leading artist of the Bei Da Huang Art School. Bei Da Huang is a remote province in the North-East of China, known as the former wastelands. In the 1950s hundred thousands of young Chinese were sent to this remote province to transform the wasteland into an agricultural area.

The art style of Bei Da Huang artists is characterized by the landscape and the experience of its cultivation. Bei-Da-Huang is an area of huge plains with cold and clear nights. Chinese people say that even the night sky has a different colour which is often a dark intensive blue.

Hao Boyi’s art works reflect the nature of his home province to an incredible perfection. On some of his images you can virtually feel the cold. On others you seem to experience the warmth that comes in spring time and brings nature back to life. Bei-Da-Huang has even a short cherry blossom season. His birds and the use of palms, stems and leaves becomes almost textural, there is a lovely serenity here too.