Stone workers

During the 1930s and 1940s in China, social turmoil and civil war fuelled a revitalise woodcut movement influenced by the potent prints of western artists such as Käthe Kollwitz. These new works graphically convey feelings of suffering and struggle.

Li Qun and Wang Qi were seminal figures in the Chinese revolutionary woodcut movement promoted by leading Chinese writer Lu Xun as a vehicle for articulating the people's revolution from the late 1920s through to the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. 'Drinking' (Acc.no. 199.1995) and 'Stone workers' are classic images of this movement. The latter is an excellent example of one of the subjects of the revolutionary genre in prints executed during the war against Japan (1937-45).

The Asian Collections, AGNSW, 2003, pg.176., During the 1930s and 1940s in China, social turmoil and civil war fuelled a revitalise woodcut movement influenced by the potent prints of western artists such as Käthe Kollwitz. These new works graphically convey feelings of suffering and struggle. Li Qun and Wang Qi were seminal figures in the Chinese revolutionary woodcut movement promoted by leading Chinese writer Lu Xun as a vehicle for articulating the people's revolution from the late 1920s through to the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949. 'Drinking' (Acc.no. 199.1995) and 'Stone workers' (Acc.no. 226.1996) are classic images of this movement. The latter is an excellent example of one of the subjects of the revolutionary genre in prints executed during the war against Japan (1937-45). The Asian Collections, AGNSW, 2003, pg.176.