This volume presents contemporary Chinese woodcuts from the Muban Foundation. A groundbreaking reference in a new and exciting field for collectors and students of art history, it includes authoritative essays by An Bin, Julia F. Andrews, Ellen Johnston Laing and Frances Wood. Hwang Yin has provided biographies of the artists and David Barker contributes a glossary of Chinese printmaking terms.

The Muban Foundation was formed in June 1997 by Christer von der Burg and the late Verena Bolinder-Maler. They decided to establish the Foundation because they shared a love of Chinese woodblock prints and were concerned about gradual decline of the art in contemporary China. The Foundation was also created as a focus for the study and appreciation of Chinese printmaking throughout the world, particularly by comparing contemporary Chinese practice with that of other cultures.

In its early days, the Foundation concentrated on acquiring the most significant work from the contemporary artists and the first of many buying trips to China took place in October 1997. Thereafter, trips took place in the spring and autumn of each year involving visits to all the major academies and art schools in China. The Muban collection now comprises illustrated and printed books from the 10th to the 19th century, sheet prints from the 17th century to the 1930s and artists prints from 1930 to the present.

The Muban portfolio is the Foundations most ambitious undertaking Christer von der Burgs intention was to devise a project both to benefit individual artists and bring contemporary Chinese woodblock prints to the attention of other printmakers, collectors, dealers and museums outside China. It took three visits to China before the portfolio was realized. Sixty artists were selected to reflect the wide range of talent working in the contemporary field and to represent a cross-section of contemporary printmaking. The majority of artists responded with great enthusiasm; many remarking that this project was one that the artists should have initiated themselves. The Foundation set no restrictions on style or content of the prints, but it gave a maximum and minimum overall paper size. Each artist was asked to print 155 copies of their image and to give the blocks to the Muban Foundation for archival and educational purposes.

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