A Loner

Zhao Zongzao was a native of Jiangying in Jiangsu province. He began his distinguished career as a printmaker in 1950 while a young student in the Fine Arts Department at Nanjing University. From 1955, Zhao taught at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts where he was appointed Dean of the Print Department (1978 to 1983). From 1983 to 1987, Zhao was the Vice-Chancellor of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, where he is still presently active.

This print demonstrates Zhao's early work, and is an illustration to a short story written by Lu Xun (1881-1936), one of the great writers of the early 20th century, who was also an advocate of the New Woodcut Movement of the 1930s and 1940s. For this reason, the work follows a conventional style developed during the New Woodcut Movement, which was strongly influenced by the German Expressionists. In the 1980s, Zhao created a series of prints that were described by Michael Sullivan as '.... the first truly modern prints produced in the People's Republic' ('Art and Artists of Twentieth Century China', University of California, 1996, p. 172).

Asian Art Department, AGNSW, February 2006.