Creating of an eternal audience

Long life and colorful career of artist Huang Yongyu are presented as his farewell gift to the world, Lin Qi reports.

In an article he wrote in 1979, Landscapes Under the Sun, the prolific artist Huang Yongyu (1924-2023) recounted anecdotes about his uncle-once-removed, Shen Congwen (1902-88), a writer and scholar of repute, and how his attitude toward life and academic research had influenced his own.

At the end of the article, he wrote: "What a long life (Shen) lived, and (his experiences were) so rich, and colorful."

Today, Huang is also regarded as a prominent figure in art and culture, whose life and career were, like Shen's, long and substantial.