Art in KMT-Ruled Areas

In response to the social and economic crisis under the rule of the Kuomintang, as well as the widespread corruption, the emergence of comics became an important artistic phenomenon. However, the woodcut organization led by the Communist Party took the opportunity of the second cooperation between the CPC and the KMT to achieve national anti-Japanese resistance and promote the CPC’s political ideas through art. At the same time, under the influence of the literary and political atmosphere in Yan’an, artists in Kuomintang-ruled areas began to think about and practice the nationalization of oil painting, in order to create works of art with “Chinese style” and “Chinese character.” After 1945, in the struggle for power between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the CPC made full use of art to propagate its political ideas and win over social forces as much as possible in order to seize national power.