Snowy Night in Shanghai

No image available

上海雪夜

1957

Shen Roujian 沈柔堅

(Chinese, 1919–1998)

Culture

China

Medium

Woodcut print; ink, color, and oil on paper

Credit Line

Gift of Thomas and Patricia Ebrey 2025.578

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

This type of Mao-era print emanates from China’s modern woodcut movement of the 1940s at the same time as it anticipates new printmaking trends of the 1980s.

Description

Under Chairman Mao, printmakers were encouraged to continue to make prints in support of the country’s modernization efforts. Themes included women joining the workforce as soldiers, farmers, and steel workers to help construct the new socialist state, as well as joining men in the fields. New motifs such as tractors, trains, electrical equipment, and smoking chimneys were introduced into landscape scenery to illustrate a prospering China.