Sans titre

This series of woodcuts presents a wide variety of research, ranging from realistic observation to abstract stylisation.

These woodcuts reinterpret a political tradition that had already reached China in the 1920s through German Expressionism. Ma Desheng presented them in Jitian [Today], the literary review, then on the railings of the park of the Museum of Fine Arts in Beijing, where The Stars group exhibited without authorisation in September 1979. With a technique stripped back to the essential, black blacks and white graphies, this silent primer questions the position and the rôle of the artist between a dormant tradition and a present rich with promise.