Artistic impressions

Spanning half a century, woodcut prints by Huang Yongyu go on display in Beijing.

Huang Yongyu is widely regarded as a legendary Chinese artist.

In his early teens, he left his hometown Fenghuang in Hunan province and traveled across the country. He basically taught himself how to draw, paint and write. He took on various jobs to support his artistic dream, working at ceramic workshops, teaching at primary schools, designing props for theater troupes and creating illustrations for magazines. He also composed poems, essays and novels.

His versatility won the recognition of well-established artists like Xu Beihong, former dean of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, who invited Huang to be a professor at the school in the early 1950s.

Huang, now 96, is best known in art circles for his ink paintings which feature an animated palette and bold brush strokes to deliver a primitive beauty. However, it is his woodcut prints that are more popular among the general public, as they are widely exhibited and often published in magazines and books.

Within a small rectangle, normally no more than 50 centimeters in length or width, Huang depicts his love of life and shrewd observations of people. His woodcuts show how he confronts the world with sensibility, honesty, wit and a sense of humor.

Forceful Cuts, an exhibition now on at Beijing Fine Art Academy's museum through Sept 26, offers a rare review of Huang's woodcut creations, through which people will have a brief insight into both Huang's mind, and the rich journey upon which life has taken the artist.

"A sizable number of the woodcuts I have made in my life-probably around 400 pieces-are here (at the exhibition)," Huang says.

Huang has exhibited widely at home and abroad, although Forceful Cuts is his first solo show that's dedicated entirely to his woodcuts. Prints on show date back as far as 1946 and carry on through to pieces produced in the early 1990s, when he began investing more time and energy into the creation of his ink paintings.

Huang began to earn a living from painting and making woodblock prints at the age of 16. He says making woodcuts is laborious, but he got into the habit and it became an addiction.

When he was young, Huang made a big canvas backpack in which to put the woodcuts, tools for sculpting and printing and some favorite books, as well as a really heavy whetstone, which made him a subject of ridicule among his acquaintances.