70 Chen Qiucao (1906-1988)
Flowers Above the Trenches
1940
Oil on canvas
45.5 x 61 cm
Chinese National Art Gallery, Beijing
This desolate landscape makes poetic the anguish of a generation shattered
by war. Chen Qiucao was trained at the Shanghai Art Academy and went on
to found the White Goose Painting Club in 1924. Later expanded into a thriving
school for Western painting, this institution, which was closed after the
Japanese invasion in 1937, gave many important modernist and activist painters
their artistic foundations.