Huang Shaoqiang

Huang Shaoqiang
黃少強
Self-Portrait on 39th Birthday (1940, detail)
Born	Huang Yishi 1901 Xiaojiang Village, Guangdong, Qing dynasty
Died	7 September 1942(1942-09-07) (aged 40–41) Xiaojiang Village, Guangdong, Republic of China
Movement	Lingnan School

Huang Shaoqiang (Chinese: 黃少強; pinyin: Huáng Shǎoqiáng, 1901 – 7 September 1942) was a Chinese artist of the Lingnan School. The grandson of a village official, he learned poetry, calligraphy, and art from a young age. He studied at the Bowen Art School and was a pupil of Gao Qifeng and Gao Jianfu, who taught a blend of Western and Chinese painting. After graduating, he became an educator while developing his own career as an artist, holding his first solo exhibition in 1926. Following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Huang raised funds for the war effort. He travelled China for several years, settling in Guangzhou by 1935. As Japanese forces moved southward, he fled to Hong Kong briefly before ultimately returning to his hometown in Guangdong. Sickly, he died at his ancestral home.

Differing from his teachers, Huang favoured depictions of the human figure. His early works showed the influence of Japanese painting, with broad swathes of colour and a sense of three-dimensionality, while later works were marked by rougher line-work that nonetheless reflected Western approaches to modelling. His works mostly portray everyday situations, highlighting the suffering of the common person, though some depict religious subjects. Death is a prevalent theme in his paintings. During his lifetime, Huang held some eighty-five exhibitions; numerous retrospectives have followed since his death.