Veteran of art leaves deep spiritual legacy

One of his best known woodcuts, Ashima, which was inspired by an ethnic folktale during a trip in Yunnan province in 1954, is now on show at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

Among those cultural luminaries who acknowledged Huang's talent, regardless of his background, was Xu Beihong, then the dean of CAFA, who landed Huang, then in Hong Kong, a teaching position at the academy's department of print art in the early 1950s. He taught there for decades, and later leveraged his endeavor in creation and education to be a vice-chairman of China Artists Association.

Settling in Beijing opened a new chapter in Huang's life. He marched into other territories of art: learning Chinese painting and oil painting. And he published essays to share his rich experiences and anecdotes of friends — mostly cultural figures — and his poems were often illustrated with his own drawings.

Huang's works have touched the softest spot in people's hearts primarily not on the technical side, but because of the vigor of life to erupt from the subjects he depicted, childlike innocence and honesty, and a witty perspective.

He revisited animals in his work to express his life philosophy. For example, he once drew a mouse and wrote on the painting: "I look ugly, (but) my mom likes me anyway."

While it was his design of the Golden Monkey stamp, issued in 1980 as the first of the rotation of zodiac stamps by China Post, that truly made him a household name. This Year of the Monkey stamp created by Huang has become a sought-after collectible on the art market.