Obituary | Chinese artist Huang Yongyu, lauded as ‘national treasure’ and known for his playful ink paintings of people, plants, animals and birds, dies aged 98
- Born in Hunan province in 1924, Huang Yongyu was self-taught and began producing art aged 14. He fled to Hong Kong before the Communist revolution but returned
- In 1980, Huang created a monkey print stamp for Lunar New Year to mark the Year of the Monkey, since when stamps marking the zodiac have been issued every year
Huang Yongyu, whose playful ink paintings of animals made him one of China’s best-known artists, died on June 13, aged 98, after an illness.
Dubbed a “national treasure” and a recipient of major awards in China and abroad, the self-taught artist, who was also a prolific writer, was for many years a familiar face in Hong Kong and enjoyed a close friendship with famed martial arts novelist Louis Cha Leung-yung and lyricist James Wong Jim.
His family announced that no farewell or mourning ceremonies have been scheduled in accordance with his last wishes.
Huang, whose pen names included Huang Xingbin, Huang Niu and Niu Fuzi, was born in Hunan province in 1924. While he never attended school, Huang studied literature and art on his own and began producing art at the age of 14. His career was dedicated to ink painting, woodblock prints and literature.
In 1948, amid political turmoil in mainland China, the then 24-year-old Huang fled to Hong Kong, where he held his first solo exhibition at the University of Hong Kong’s Fung Ping Shan Library. In his five years in the city, he worked as the arts editor of newspaper Ta Kung Pao and of The Great Wall Pictorial magazine, where he published sketches of places including Kennedy Road and Wan Chai.
After returning to mainland China, he became a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, the leading fine arts academy in the country.
For Lunar New Year in 1980, Huang painted a monkey stamp, the first in his Chinese zodiac stamp series, to celebrate the Year of the Monkey, which also gave him the nickname “grandpa monkey stamp”. Since then, China has issued zodiac stamps for 43 consecutive years.
In 2004, the Hong Kong Museum of Art organised a large-scale exhibition of Huang’s work to mark his 80th birthday. It lauded the artist’s greatest achievement as being able to integrate elements of design, printmaking and mural painting into Chinese painting with humour and immediacy.
Huang wrote many autobiographical novels and essays throughout his career, and continued working almost until his death. Having held art exhibitions at the age of 80 and 90, he had been preparing for his centennial exhibition, which was scheduled for the ninth day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar in 2024.
