Stylogeny combining Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement × Expressionist Woodcut Graphics

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Style combination · Pairs well

Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement × Expressionist Woodcut Graphics

Lu Xun's movement learned from Kollwitz and Masereel; set the two side by side to show subjective anguish turning into collective resistance.

From the research on Expressionist Woodcut Graphics

Its parent: borrow the German gouge and distortion, then point them outward at a shared cause instead of inner anguish.

From the research on Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement

Mix them and make something Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement Expressionist Woodcut Graphics

LOUDChinese Modern × Expressionist Woodcut
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics, their arrangement from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement, the finish from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

01

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement Expressionist Woodcut Graphics

Type from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics
Colour from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics
Form from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics
Composition from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement
Surface from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement

02

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Expressionist Woodcut Graphics

Loud

Archivo Black, standing in for Heavy grotesque and Fraktur journal mastheads

Text · Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement

The leftist print movement launched by Lu Xun's 1931 Shanghai woodcut workshop, which made the self-cut black-and-white woodcut China's art of national crisis and revolution. Young artists learned from Käthe Kollwitz, Frans Masereel and Soviet woodcuts to gouge close-up, diagonal images of workers, refugees and resistance for journals, books and travelling exhibitions; in Yan'an after 1942 they adopted New Year print outlines and colour for peasant audiences.

Shippori Mincho; Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement used Hand-cut Chinese characters carved into the block and Brush-written kaishu titles on journal and book covers

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Expressionist Woodcut Graphics, with a counter-accent from Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement Expressionist Woodcut Graphics

  • #ede4cf ground · 36%
  • #151311 ink · 14%
  • #d9932f accent · 18%
  • #c8432b accent · 14%
  • #2c4a8c accent · 10%
  • #6e8b57 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ede4cf;
  --ink: #151311;
  --accent-1: #d9932f;
  --accent-2: #c8432b;
  --accent-3: #2c4a8c;
  --accent-4: #6e8b57;
  --font-display: "Archivo Black", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

04

The two styles

A black-and-cream woodcut-style illustration shows a tightly packed group of armed people advancing through rubble, led by a large foreground figure gripping a rifle. A woman carrying a child appears at upper left, while soldiers, an artillery piece, smoke and ruined buildings recede beneath the Chinese lettering “前進”. 1931–1949 · East Asia Chinese Modern Woodcut Movement The leftist print movement launched by Lu Xun's 1931 Shanghai woodcut workshop, which made the self-cut black-and-white woodcut China's art of national crisis and revolution. Young artists learned from Käthe Kollwitz, Frans Masereel and Soviet woodcuts to gouge close-up, diagonal images of workers, refugees and resistance for journals, books and travelling exhibitions; in Yan'an after 1942 they adopted New Year print outlines and colour for peasant audiences. A black-and-cream woodcut-style image shows an elongated figure striding upward through sharply tilted city buildings toward a radiant sun, with smaller people reaching upward from the lower left. Jagged lettering across the top reads “FURTHER.” 1905–1925 · Central Europe, Western Europe Expressionist Woodcut Graphics The graphic arm of German Expressionism, from Die Brücke in Dresden (1905) to the Berlin journals Der Sturm and Die Aktion and Frans Masereel's woodcut novels. Artists revived the woodcut as a raw, subjective medium: they gouged distorted figures and jagged lettering into the same block and printed them in harsh black or a single flat ink, often on coloured paper, for exhibition posters, portfolios, manifestos and magazine covers.

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More combinations

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