Calligraphy and the Accidental
Cartoonist
Huang was born in 1917 into an intellectual family in Shanghai. From a young age he was introduced to his father’s social circle of the city’s literati. He studied literature, history, and philosophy, as well as calligraphy and painting, copying his family’s art collection for practice.
Despite this formal education, Huang’s career took an unexpected turn when he was a very young man. By the time he was a teen, his skill as a painter was evident, and in 1934 he created Niubizi, a cartoon character that would become one of the stars of China’s golden age of cartoons as a symbol (and defender) of the common Chinese man. Despite his success, Huang considered himself a painter by vocation and a cartoonist by accident.
Kaarten met calligraphy in de Art Gallery van Muset Postersquare
