History of building picture story books “Lenin in October” and “Lenin in 1918”

In 1950, the People's Republic of China and the USSR signed the Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance. The development of the Chinese economy and the sphere of art has experienced the all-round influence of the USSR. The Chinese language was translated works on the revolutionary struggle of the Soviet people, as well as on the topic of production and construction. Many works began to be produced in the format of picture story books. This trend greatly contributed to the popularization and dissemination of Soviet literature and art in China. Gu Bingxin is one of the talented artists of picture story books on Soviet revolutionary themes. Gu Bingxin is a key figure in the Lianhuanhua area. During his life he created more than one hundred books. Only in the fifties the artist created fifty picture story books. Picture story books „Lenin in October” and „Lenin in 1918”, created by Gu Bingxin and other artists and based on the films of the same name, can be attributed to the best works on the theme of the Russian revolution. They combine not only the successfully used traditional Chinese shading techniques, but also the perspective laws, borrowed from Western European painting, as well as the language features of the film text. The characters of the books are characterized by careful elaboration, a rich composition and an ideal density of lines. These works have high artistic value and are still considered valuable specimens in collections of book lovers in pictures. In 1971 and 1972 The Shanghai Publishing House Renmin Meishu produced these two picture story books - “Lenin in October” and “Lenin in 1918” respectively. Three million copies of the first edition were quickly sold out. Both works fully reflected the expressiveness of the contour drawing. Bends of lines and strokes, obtained by pressing the tip of the brush with the subsequent easy removal of the brush by moving to the right, showed a change in the structure of the body and the direction of movements. The density, length, thickness and direction of the lines conveyed a sense of space. Drawing on the needs of the image, the artists used the near, middle, distant plan, horizontal angle of view, top view and other compositional techniques with different angles of view. This helped to reproduce on paper realistic scenes from life. However, in general, the style of painting turned out to be too strict and neat, the illustrations were not enough fun. It was these shortcomings that showed that the freedom of artists in the style and form of painting, the choice of the main theme and even their personal freedom was severely limited by the conditions dictated by the Cultural Revolution and which made it difficult to create such rare masterpieces.