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M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong, © Ma Desheng
Ma Desheng 馬德升
Night Bird 夜鳥
1980, printed 2005
In this woodcut print, a tiny bird is perched on the tip of a long bamboo pole. Against a background of roughly hexagonal shapes with lines emerging from their sides, the bird appears to be illuminated by stars, a possible allusion to the Stars Group. Ma Desheng was a founding member of this group of artists, who championed art as a means of self-expression in China in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A self-taught artist influenced by the woodcuts of Käthe Kollwitz and Edvard Munch, Ma produced monochromatic and expressive prints that were in sharp contrast to the realistic imagery and bright colours of propaganda art of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Many of his other prints depict the feelings of depression permeating Chinese society and were published in the underground literary journal Today. After moving to Paris in 1986, Ma resumed working in ink-wash painting, a medium he had first used in his early career in China.
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