Ai Qing

Ai Qing (Chinese艾青, Pinyin Ai Qing, Ai Ch'ing W.-G.; born as Jiang Zhenghan蒋正涵, Jiǎng Zhènghán; stylized name Jiang Haicheng蒋海澄, Jiǎng Hǎichéng; born March 27, 1910 in Jinhua, Zhejiang, † 5. May 1996 Beijing) was a Chinese poet and painter. He is considered the co-founder of the "New Poetry " ( Xin Shi ), which in turn was crucial for the further development of Chinese poetry. He was the father of political conceptual artist, sculptor and curator Ai Weiwei.

Life

At the age of 18 Ai Qing joined the Academy of Arts in Hangzhou and began to study painting. In 1929, he broke off the training and went to Paris. While he was in Paris studying art from 1929 to 1932, he was influenced by the paintings of Renoir and Van Gogh, from the philosophy of Kant and Hegel and of the poetry of Mayakovsky and Verhaeren. During this time, Ai Qing wrote his first poems can be divided into the modern age. In 1932 he returned to China, joined a left-wing artists association in Shanghai at and founded the painters Community Chundi Huahui. He was then arrested by the Kuomintang and was until 1935 under arrest. Also in this time, the meeting coincides with the most important for China's literary modernity author Lu Xun, who brought him to devote himself entirely to writing. In 1939 he moved to Guilin and took up a position as an editor at the daily newspaper Guixi Daily. In 1940 he was Dean of the Chinese Department at the University Chongqing Yucai. After a move to Yan'an in 1941, he joined the following year, the Communist Party of China. He was from 1949 to 1953 the deputy chief editor of People's Literature (人民 文学, Rénmín Wenxue ). In addition, he was active in the 1940s and 1950s in communist literature mergers. From 1958 to 1975 he was sent as part of the " anti-rightist movement " after the Hundred Flowers movement into exile in the West Chinese province of Xinjiang and was until 1978 a publication ban. 1975 had been allowed him officially, temporarily to travel to a hospital in the capital. In 1979 he visited Germany, Austria and Italy. This trip inspired him to various poems, including five over Germany. One of these poems, The Wall (PDF, 61 kB), had the Berlin Wall to the object. In 1980, he traveled again to France.

Ai Qing died in 1996 of pneumonia and heart problems at the age of 86 years. His body of work includes over 20 longer poems also about 1000 shorter and about 200 essays. He is the father of artist Ai Xuan ( b. 1947 ) and Ai Weiwei ( b. 1957 ).

Reception

" Ai Qing's poems, which are characterized by simplicity, directness, and the emphatic expression, flattened after entering the CCP (1941 ) and more into pure propaganda. "

Awards

French President François Mitterrand honored him in 1985 with the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

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