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M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong, © Ma Desheng
Ma Desheng 馬德升
Young Lady I 仕女（一）
1979, printed 2005
In this woodcut print, a man crouches on the ground, and a woman kneels behind him, her face tilted back, facing the sun in the top left corner. Her right arm is stretched back towards her long, flowing hair, which reaches the ground. The work demonstrates Ma Desheng’s exploration of geometric abstraction, with the man represented by rectangles and straight lines, and the woman by ellipses and curves. A self-taught artist, 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. The small head and rounded curves of the woman in the print prefigure the style of nude female figures that Ma would later paint. 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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