Recently, the “Deep Local Affection – Yu Yahua Printmaking Exhibition” jointly organized by Jiaxing Museum and Haining Yidexuan Art Museum opened in the Heyuan Exhibition Hall on the third floor of Jiaxing Museum. The exhibition will continue until March 29th, during which a supporting activity of “Printmaking Rubbings” will also be launched.
This exhibition showcases a total of 111 printmaking works created by Mr. Yu Yahua during his lifetime, 50 master prints, 25 sketches, 5 letters, and woodcut tools. In order to echo the printmaking content and present the scenery of that year in a three-dimensional manner, it also intersperses with 40 folk collections in the Jiaxing Museum. In a specific era, the soul of a painter is tightly bound to the land in the southeast corner of Haining. With the divine power of fate, he carves over a hundred prints, solidifying the emotions, customs, and traditions of the people on the wooden board, forever inspiring the collective memory of the people on this land.
The obsession with painting and the love for the land make the painter express the most essential character of this land. This is the dedication of life, the singing of the soul, and the copulation of life and land. Yu Yahua (1935.8.23-2003.8.18) was admitted to the Printmaking Department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Fine Arts) in 1958. In 1961, in response to the national call for “returning to rural areas to support agriculture,” he transformed from a top student of the Academy of Fine Arts to a farmer who had lost his soil. During this process, painting never left his life, portraying a unique era and leaving us with a specimen of life to reminisce about history. (Jiaxing Museum)