Page 145 - Chinese Art Bonhams San Francisco December 18, 2017

Lawrence K. Rosinger was a highly respected expert in Far Eastern over twenty years. During a second trip to China in 1973, Rosinger
studies. Born in New York City, Rosinger received his B.A. in history interviewed Marshall Ye Jianying, head of China’s armed forces and
from the City College of New York in 1932 and a master’s degree in Far one of the six top leaders of the country. Rosinger retired in the early
Eastern studies from Columbia University in 1936. From 1941 to 1942, 1980s, and upon his passing in 1994, his papers, correspondence,
he worked as assistant to the India Government Trade Commissioner, transcripts, and photographs were donated to the Bentley Historical
and as a research associate with the Foreign Policy Association. Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
During this same period, he was awarded two visiting lectureships by
Columbia University and the University of California-Berkeley. Among the interviews Rosinger conducted during his 1946 trip to
China were two lengthy talks with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.
Rosinger made his first trip to China in 1946, traveling to Shanghai, Rosinger was gifted this group of woodcuts by Mao during this time.
Beijing, Yan’an, the Yellow River area, and Manchuria as a These images, celebrating the lives and capturing the struggles of
correspondent for the Foreign Policy Association and representing the people, very much reflect the ideas Mao propagated in the 1942
several other American publications. He conducted more than Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature, to create peasant-focused art
two dozen interviews with Chinese Communist leaders, third party and advance the cause of socialism through art. Many of the artists
spokesmen, and high-ranking Nationalist Party officials. Upon included this group such as Gu Yuan, Yan Han and Wo Zha, trained
returning to the United States in the late 1940s, Rosinger wrote and in the art of woodcut at the Lu Xun Academy of Literature and Art.
lectured extensively on the Far East, and was consulted regularly by Established in 1938 in Yan’an by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, the
the U.S. State Department regarding China and Far Eastern policies. Academy sought to teach artists regional and folk traditions and
In 1948 he began to work as a research associate for the American to endow them with the skills to advance socialism through art.
Institute of Pacific Relations. Despite coming under attack during the Often bold and theatrical in composition, these prints chronicle the
McCarthy era, Rosinger defended his work as a scholar of Chinese war against the Japanese, and convey the promise at the time of
studies in testimony before the McCarran subcommittee investigating revolutionary change.
pro-Communist activities. After moving to Detroit, Michigan in 1952,
Lawrence Rosinger taught at Henry Ford Community College for

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