Mao's Children

Artist Xu Wenhua (Chinese, born 1941)

Date1965

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsCanvas: 32 1/2 × 33 1/2 inches (82.6 × 85.1 cm);
Frame: 37 × 38 inches (94 × 96.5 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of Andrew Byong-Soo Kim, MBA 1963, and Wan Kyun Rha Kim

Terms

Paintings
Oil
Children
Students
Schools
Politics
Socialism
Canvas
Chinese

Object number2004.038.001

Label CopyWith the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China's European-trained realist painters were assigned to create a new art for the new nation, for the purpose of serving the masses. At first the Socialist Realist style focused on heroic depictions of the nation's leaders, but after widespread famine in the late 1950s, a shift in subject matter occurred, and artists began to glorify ordinary people. Xu Wenhua's work typifies the trend in oil painting in the mid-1960s, showing enthusiasm for the cult of Mao Zedong that would fuel the Cultural Revolution. Xu also gained fame for his political poster designs. From 1979 to 1985 he taught art at the Shanghai Light Industrial Design Institute. In 1986 he moved to New York.

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