{{Short description|Chinese painter, cartoonist and fashion designer (1916–2007)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=December 2019}} {{family name hatnote|Yu|lang=Chinese}} {{Infobox person/Wikidata |fetchwikidata=ALL |dateformat=mdy }}
'''Yu Feng''' ({{zh|s=郁风}}; July 25, 1916 – {{fdate|April 15, 2007|MDY}}) was a Chinese painter, cartoonist, and fashion designer. She and Liang Baibo were China's first female cartoonists.<ref name=":0">{{cite book|last1=Lent|first1=John A.|last2=Ying|first2=Xu|title=Women's Manga in Asia and Beyond |chapter=Chinese Women Cartoonists: A Brief, Generational Perspective |series=Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels |date=2019|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AiSNDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA230|pages=229–251|editor1-last=Ogi|editor1-first=Fusami|editor2-last=Suter|editor2-first=Rebecca|editor3-last=Nagaike|editor3-first=Kazumi|editor4-last=Lent|editor4-first=John A.|publisher=Springer|doi=10.1007/978-3-319-97229-9_15|isbn=9783319972282|s2cid=166750738}}</ref> Her husband was the artist {{ill|Huang Miaozi|zh|黄苗子}}.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=http://chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm=028_yiyuan.inc&issue=028|title=Huang Miaozi and Yu Feng|last=Jaivin|first=Linda|website=China Heritage Quarterly|access-date=November 12, 2019}}</ref>
== Life and career == Yu Feng was born on July 25, 1916, in Beijing, the daughter of magistrate Yu Hua ({{lang|zh|郁華}}).<ref name=":1" /> Her uncle was the famed writer Yu Dafu.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />
She graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Changing clothes in China : fashion, history, nation|last=Finnane, Antonia.|date=2008|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=9780231143509|location=New York|pages=133|oclc=84903948}}</ref> She later studied under painter Pan Yuliang.<ref name=":2" />
Her cartooning career began in 1929 or 1930 with her first cartoon, an Aubrey Beardsley-influenced work, in ''Shanghai Manhua'' ("Shanghai Sketch").<ref name=":0" /> In Shanghai she married fellow ''Shanghai Manhua'' artist Huang Miaozi. Their families had different political orientations and she was taller than him, but they remained married for over sixty years until her death in 2007.<ref name=":2" /> Throughout the 1930s, she continued to draw cartoons for magazines like the English-language ''Zhongguo Zhisheng'' ("Voice of China") and ''Jiuwang Ribao'' ("National Salvation Daily").<ref name=":0" /> One example of her wartime work is the 1938 cartoon "Let the Gunfire of National Salvation Smash This Pair of Shackles", which depicts both nationalistic and gender liberation with its woman breaking the chains of shackles.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|url=http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft829008m5/|title=War and popular culture : resistance in modern China, 1937–1945|author=Hung, Chang-tai |date=1996|publisher=MC Publishing|isbn=9576383862|edition=Taiwan |location=Taipei|oclc=268787792}}</ref>
In 1955, Yu Feng was deputy editor of the magazine ''Xin Guancha'' ("New Observer") when it held a fourm on the future of Chinese fashion. Yu Feng was placed in charge of a national campaign for "dress reform", focusing on matters such as economic frugality, traditional folk dress, and national identity.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Changing clothes in China : fashion, history, nation|last=Finnane, Antonia.|date=2008|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=9780231143509|location=New York|pages=208–226|oclc=84903948}}</ref>
Beginning in the early 1940s, Yu Feng and Huang Miaozi were part of a group of artists, writers, and other cultural figures in Shanghai and Chongqing later known as "The Layabouts Lodge" (Erliu Tang 二流堂).<ref name=":1" /> During the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, the members of the Layabouts Lodge were denounced and many were imprisoned.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|url=http://chinaheritagequarterly.org/editorial.php?issue=025|title=The People's Republic of Wine|last=Barmé|first=Geremie R.|date=March 2011|website=China Heritage Quarterly|access-date=November 12, 2019|issue=25}}</ref> Yu Feng and Huang Miaozi were imprisoned separately for seven years.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> Yu Feng made paintings out of readily available materials like toilet paper, soap, and candy wrappers.<ref name=":0" /> Both artists were politically rehabilitated after the Cultural Revolution and continued to exhibit art in China and throughout the world.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />
After the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, Yu Feng and Huang Miaozi moved to Brisbane and became Australian citizens, but the couple later returned to China.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":4" />
Yu Feng died in 2007.<ref name=":1" /> In 2011, the ''Selected Essays of Yu Feng'' was published,<ref>{{Cite book|title=Yu feng san wen jing xuan|date=2011|publisher=Ren min wen xue chu ban she|author=Yu feng |isbn=9787020083190|location=Bei jing|oclc=862798076}}</ref> which contained articles reflecting on her work in cartooning, art, and fashion.<ref>{{Cite book|title=A modern miscellany : Shanghai cartoon artists, Shao Xunmei's circle and the travels of Jack Chen, 1926–1938|author=Bevan, Paul |isbn=9789004307940|location=Boston|oclc=929855787 |publisher=Brill |date = November 6, 2015}}</ref>
== References == {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Yu, Feng}} Category:1916 births Category:2007 deaths Category:Created via preloaddraft Category:Artists from Beijing Category:Chinese women fashion designers Category:Chinese fashion designers Category:Chinese editorial cartoonists Category:20th-century Chinese painters Category:Victims of the Cultural Revolution Category:Chinese women painters Category:Chinese women cartoonists Category:Central Academy of Fine Arts alumni