Mr. Zhang Yangxi (1912—1964) was a highly accomplished artist in the art development of 20th century. He was good at engraving. Under the direct of new woodcut movement proposed by Lu Xun in his early years, Zhang picked up the knife as his pen and treated the toiling masses as charity case. He pointed his criticizing blade directly toward the darkness of the society and his work such as The Rage of Starvation, Market for Trading Human played great role in encouraging Chinese people to unite to fight against Japan’s invasion. After the foundation of new China, Zhang focused on the exploring of nationalization of engraving by combining Chinese folk art style with modern cutting method of wood engraving. Some works like Autumn Moon on Pinghu Lake, Send Meal to Field extended the expressive force with lyricism and formal beauty. Zhang’s work laid a solid foundation for the establishment of engraving style of Zhejiang school. Besides engraving, Zhang Yangxi also involved in multiple art categories like ink paint, watercolor, oil painting, line drawing and sketch. Through his works, we can see his relentless pursuit of thought and form, style and aesthetics.

The year of 2012 is exactly the one-hundred-year anniversary of Zhang Yangxi. So the National Art Museum of China holds this exhibition specially. All the works exhibited include not only his classical engraving the National Art Museum of China has preserved but the representative works at each stage referring to each category his offspring had newly donated to the government. This exhibition is held to commemorate this outstanding artist who had constantly craved for art in his long life of art.