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M+ Sigg Collection, Hong Kong, © Ma Desheng
Ma Desheng 馬德升
Young Lady II 侍女（二）
1980, printed 2005
This woodcut print depicts two scenes. At left, a man crouches with his head on the ground, and a woman kneels behind him. Her head is turned upwards, facing two crosses, and her long, flowing hair reaches the ground. At right, the couple’s arms are stretched back, and the woman’s hair flows behind her. 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’s monochromatic and expressive prints were in sharp contrast to the realistic imagery and bright colours of propaganda art produced during 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 that Ma would later adopt in his paintings of nude female figures. 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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