"Painting Shanghai - Shanghai Style in Comics" art exhibition. Photo by Xia Junlong
Zhongxin Online, February 3 (Wang Jie) Feng Zikai's "Kiss", Zhang Leping's "Sanmao", He Youzhi's "I Came from the Folk"... "Painting Shanghai - Shanghai Style in Comics" Art Exhibition opened on the 3rd in Shanghai Culture Square, nearly 600 Chinese and foreign comic works were exhibited in Chinese, English and French, telling the changes of the times in Shanghai.
The 1930s was a golden age of Chinese comic masters. Since then, generations of cartoonists, such as Feng Zikai, known as the "originator of modern Chinese comics", Zhang Leping, the "father of Sanmao", and He Youzhi, a famous comic strip artist, have used their brushes to record the unique charm of Shanghai. The classic depictions of Shanghai cartoonists' Shanghai culture, city life, customs and human feelings have become a unique landscape in the history of Chinese comics.
Works by He Youzhi. Photo by Xia Junlong
The series of "Walking through the Streets and Reminiscing about the Past" and the four original works provided by the Shanghai Municipal History Museum, "He Youzhi Painting Three Hundred and Sixty Lines", were all painted by He Youzhi according to his own memory when he was 80 or 90 years old. With this special talent and the way of "painting and talking about old Shanghai", He Youzhi has left a precious historical fragment of the urban transformation of the new and old Shanghai.
Zhang Leping painted "Sanmao". Photo by Xia Junlong
Contemporary cartoonists' portrayal of "Magic Capital" is a different landscape. For example, "post-90s" comic writer Leia Muravik brought her masterpiece "Le Grand Vide". From the end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017, she studied and lived in Shanghai for 4 months, painting many sketches and visiting the famous Chinese painter Dai Dunbang. After returning to France, she created her first comic strip, Le Grand Vide, which inspired her creations through the prosperity and modernization of the Shanghai metropolis, as well as Chinese culture and the art of painting.
It is worth mentioning that the art exhibition "Painting Shanghai - Shanghai Style in Comics" was jointly curated by French comics research scholar Yohan Radomski and Chinese curator Zhou Yi.
"Painting Shanghai - Shanghai Style in Comics" art exhibition. Photo by Xia Junlong
"When I came to China, I immediately became interested in Chinese comics." Yohan Radomski said that he hopes that through the exhibition, the works of these artists will be moved from books to the walls, as if traveling through the history of Shanghai, which can not only awaken the memories of Shanghainese in the past, but also allow foreign tourists to understand the history of the city. (End)