Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan


Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan. Artist unknown; based on an oil painting by Liu Chunhua. c. 1969 C.E. Color lithograph. 

  • Striding atop a mountain peak wearing a look of determination on his face, Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan shows a young Mao Zedong 
  • Chinese Communist revolutionary, founding father of the People's Republic of China, and leader of China from 1949-76
  • Liu Chunhua celebrated Chairman Mao and his longstanding commitment to Communist Party ideals. Painted in 1967 at the dawn of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, this work uses socialist realism to portray Chairman Mao as a revolutionary leader committed to championing the common people.
  • During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), artists focused on creating portraits of Mao, or “Mao paintings,” which represented Mao’s effort to regain his hold after bitter political struggles within the party.
  • the movement aimed to quell criticisms of Mao in drama, literature, and the visual arts. More broadly, it aimed to correct political fallout from the disasters of the 1950s, especially the widespread famine and deaths that resulted from the Great Leap Forward (an attempt from 1958–61 to rapidly modernize China, transforming it from an agrarian economy into an industrialized, socialist society)
  •  reinvigorate Communist ideology in general. 
  • In the years that followed, Mao would lead the country through a decade of violent class struggles aimed at purging traditional customs and capitalism from Chinese society.
  • In the early years of the Cultural Revolution, artists such as Liu Chunhua turned to a style known as socialist realism for creating portraits of Mao Zedong. Socialist realism was introduced to China in the 1950s in order to address the lives of the working class. Suitable for propaganda, socialist realism aimed for clear, intelligible subjects and emotionally moving themes. 
  • Subjects often included peasants, soldiers, and workers—all of whom represented the central concern of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party. Modeled after works in the Soviet Union, paintings in this style were rendered in oil on canvas. They notably departed from Chinese hanging scrolls in ink and paper
  • Mao paintings typically pictured the Chinese leader in an idealized fashion, as a luminous presence at the center of the composition. 
  • Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan presents a critical moment in Chinese Communist Party history: Mao marching toward the coal mines of Anyuan, Jiangxi province in south-central China, where he was instrumental in organizing a nonviolent strike of thirteen thousand miners and railway workers. 
  • Occurring only a year after the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the Anyuan Miners’ Strike of 1922 was a defining moment for the Chinese Communist Party because the miners represented the suffering of the masses at the heart of the revolutionary cause. Many of the miners enlisted as soldiers in the Red Army (the army of the Chinese Communist Party), intent on following the young Mao toward revolution.
  • Painting nearly half a century after the Anyuan Miners’ Strike, Liu Chunhua created Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan for a national exhibition.
  • To create this painting, he studied old photographs of Mao and visited Anyuan to interview workers for visual veracity. 
  • The cool color tonalities of Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan also differ from other Mao paintings, which tended toward warm tones with clear, blue skies
  • Others often featured vibrant red accents—red being the color of revolution. Instead, Liu Chunhua opted for deep blue and purple hues to capture Mao’s determination as he marched to address the plight of those suffering.
  • In Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan, Liu Chunhua adapted Chinese landscape conventions to a new style and purpose—an evocative portrayal that suggested that Mao was capable of leading the country toward revolution. He pictured his subject emerging atop a mountain with clouds of mist below.
  • Mao appears superhuman, yet also practical and charismatic.
  • With an umbrella tucked beneath one arm and the other hand clenched into a fist, and wearing windswept robe
  • As a prominent icon in the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan celebrated the grassroots nature of revolutionary history and cultivated devotion to Mao during a tumultuous time. As a brilliant example of Chinese Communist Party propaganda, it was reportedly reproduced over nine hundred million times, and distributed widely in print, sculpture, and other media.

  • When Mao Zhedong first came to power in 1949, he encouraged artists to create “art for the people” that would convey Communist ideas in ways accessible to the masses.
  • Realistic oil paintings of workers, soldiers, and peasants began to replace traditionally popular ink paintings featuring such natural subjects as landscapes, birds, and flowers. The institution of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 led to strict regulation of artistic production.
  • In the early 1920s, Mao was among a group of enthusiastic Communist leaders who had guided the mineworkers through a successful strike. The strike had resulted in higher wages, better labor conditions, a radical educational program, and widespread support for the Communist party. The heroic pose and warm, almost glowing tones used to depict the Chairman here are characteristic of the many idealized Mao portraits produced during this period.
  • Chairman Mao en Route to Anyuan became one of the most popular images of the Cultural Revolution. It was published widely in newspapers and journals, and reproduced in the form of posters, statue
  • more than nine hundred million reproductions 

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