外国友人收集的中国宣传画

This site is dedicated to the Chinese propaganda poster as it has been produced from 1949 till the present day. So-called propaganda art has played a major supporting role in the many campaigns that were designed to mobilize the people, and throughout the People‘s Republic, the propaganda poster has been the favored vehicle through which art conveyed model behavior. I‘ve been collecting these Chinese political posters for many years now, and have brought together quite a nice collection of some 2,000 titles, spanning almost six decades of Chinese poster production. From time to time, new sections will be added to the site, devoted to the political, social and economic movements and developments that have found their way into visual propaganda over the years. As my collection expands over time, existing sections will expand as well in order to include more or more exciting posters that I have acquired.

For more general information about the genre of Chinese propaganda art, try the sections on Visualizing the Future and New Year Prints (and chubby babies). The sections devoted to artists and designers — (A-M) and (N-Z) — provide details about a great number of people engaged in poster design. Other sections of this on-line exhibition are listed below; alternatively, you can consult the SiteMap for an overview of the site‘s contents.

Due to the enormous visual impact these posters have even today, they literally cry out to be exhibited. Moreover, in a society that has been changing as fundamentally as the Chinese since 1949, propaganda posters enable us to witness these historic and aesthetic changes from up close. The first 50 years of the People‘s Republic have left us with a body of materials that give an idea of how China saw itself, and its future, over the years. By showing a breathtaking glimpse of the way in which the country has developed over the past 50 years, these materials provide an illustrated history of modern China in a nutshell.

The designers of many of the posters shown on this website have been identified. More information about these artists --short biographies, often including other examples of the works they produced-- can be found by clicking on those images that have been linked (for example, the posters above and below). The translation of the slogans on the posters becomes visible when one hovers the pointer over the images. This feature now is available for IE- and FireFox users!

A small part of the collection — mostly materials from the early 1970s up to the early 1990s — has been included in a book I published quite some time ago which traces the development of Chinese propaganda art. Chinese Propaganda Posters — From Revolution to Modernization (Armonk; Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur: M.E. Sharpe 1996; The Pepin Press 1995, 1998, 2001), which contains many excellent color illustrations, is still available. A more recent publication, Chinese Propaganda Posters: From the Collection of Michael Wolf (Taschen, 2003), contains a number of posters that can also be found on this website.

On-line exhibition