Leshan has a long history and has nurtured a rich and colorful intangible cultural heritage (hereinafter referred to as “intangible heritage”), which has become a bright treasure in the garden of Leshan culture.
On September 26th, the evaluation activity of 2024 “Encounter Sichuan” Sichuan Specialty Handicrafts was concluded in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and 50 handicrafts with great regional characteristics and cultural heritage were awarded the title of 2024 Sichuan Specialty Handicrafts. Among them, “Yuanhenglizhen”, a New Year's Painting from Jiajiang New Year's Painting Institute of Jiajiang County, Leshan City, was selected.
Jiajiang New Year's Paintings
Jiajiang woodblock prints originated during the Wanli and Tianqi periods of the Ming Dynasty, and were historically known as one of the three most important year paintings in Sichuan, along with Mianzhu and Liangping year paintings.In 2008, Jiajiang woodblock prints were listed as one of the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects.
Jiajiang woodblock prints are simple, bold and colorful, with a strong local flavor and local cultural characteristics, distinctive style. The production process is very complex, the New Year's paintings artists first to decay the draft, carve the plate, the production of powder embryo paper, and then the embryo paper concave-convex paste on the board, with the line board printed ink lines, and then use the color plate once a set of prints, some of the New Year's paintings set of prints as many as seven or eight times, without a little bit of hand-drawn. The pigments used are natural pigments developed by plant and ore processing, colorful, long time does not fade.
Jiajiang New Year paintings absorb the traditional modeling techniques of murals and woodblock prints, with rich, realistic compositions, well-proportioned and reasonable characters, exaggerated shapes and vivid expressions. The contents are colorful and the subjects are not limited by time and space, mainly including ancestor statues, gods and goddesses, landscapes, birds and flowers, theatrical characters, myths and legends, etc. The works are full of a strong flavor of life with folklore, folk stories, opera and myths as the subjects.