Jiang Feng (artist)

Jiang Feng (Chinese: 江丰; 1910–1983) was a Chinese artist known for incorporating politics into his artwork, and using woodcut as his form of media. He was a member of the Communist Party.

Jiang Feng was born in Shanghai. His original name was Zhou Xi. Jiang grew up in a working class family. As a teenager, he became involved in left-wing politics, mainly because he worked as a bookkeeper for a railroad company and participated in labor strike activities.

At the age of nineteen, Jiang began taking classes at the White Swan Western Painting Club in Shanghai.

In 1931, Jiang joined a group of protesting students and launched the Shanghai Eighteen Art Society Research Center. The group got its name from the year it began forming, 1929- the 18th year of the republic. The group published and spread anti-imperialist propaganda among Chinese workers.

He participated in founding Lu Xun's Creative Print Movement. Lu supplied the Eighteen Art Society with funds, woodcuts, and books. He put Jiang and the members of the "Eighteen Art Society in charge of selecting students for the workshop on woodcut technique in 1931 that Lu Xun organized in Shanghai."

In 1932, Jiang officially became a part of the Communist Party. Soon after he was elected executive of the League of Left-Wing Artists.

On numerous occasions, Jiang Feng was arrested. Shortly after Jiang joined the Communist Party, he was arrested along with eleven other members of the Eighteen Art Society by the Nationalist Government. He spent two years in prison. During this time he led hunger strikes and organized a school. In 1933, two months after his release, Jiang was rearrested, and spent another two years in jail. In the wake of Mao Zedong's Rectification Campaign in 1942 Jiang was arrested again for unknown reasons.

After his second release from prison, he returned to Shanghai in 1935. There, he continued his political activity. Jiang worked for a publication titled Iron Horse Press. He produced several woodcuts inspired by Soviet Constructivism for them.

When the Japanese attacked Shanghai in 1937, Jiang fled to the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in Yan'an.

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