09.

Wang Qi (1918-2016)

Lu Xun and the Youth Movement

1973

Woodblock print

Wang Qi made the earliest portrait in this exhibition (no. 4). Here he presents Lu Xun with starkly chiselled features, older but wiser, still wielding his brush as a political weapon. He had sympathized with the 1920s-30s leftist youth movement, which was repressed by the Guomindang government. How would he have reacted to the Cultural Revolution (1966-76)? When this print was made, the destructive youth movement of the late 1960s had been brought under control, and students were back in universities.

Muban Educational Trust registration number wanqv024