From Shanghai to Ohio

Woo Chong Yung, 吳仲熊, (Wu Zhongxiong), (1898–1989), also known in the USA as C. Y. Woo, was a highly accomplished painter, calligrapher, and poet from Shanghai. During the 1920s to 1940s, Woo was at the centre of China’s cultural world, feted in art circles in both Shanghai and Beijing. However, faced with political persecution Woo migrated to Ohio before the onset of the Cultural Revolution. Once in the United States, he became an active presence in the local community, teaching classes in Chinese painting and martial arts, exhibiting and lecturing in local colleges, and contributing his talents to local arts councils and ethnic festivals in Columbus and central Ohio. His lifetime works were collected almost exclusively by the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Frank Museum of Art at Otterbein University which, until now, have gone unseen by the public.

This ground-breaking catalogue illustrates Woo’s unique position in Chinese painting history. His remarkable experience of emigrating from China in the 1960s and becoming an American utterly transformed and reshaped both his life and painting.

Accompanies the exhibition From Shanghai to Ohio: Wu Zhongxiong on display at Cincinnati Art Museum from May 10^th– August 18^th, 2024.

Author biographies

Hou-mei Sung is curator of East Asian Art, Cincinnati Art Museum.

Julia F. Andrews is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History of Art, the Ohio State University.

Kuiyi Shen is professor of Asian Art History, Theory, and Criticism, University of California, San Diego.

Table of Contents

• Foreword by Cameron Kitchin, director, Cincinnati Art Museum
• Foreword by Janice Glowski, director, curator and art historian at Otterbein University, The Frank Museum of Art
• Introduction and Acknowledgements by Hou-mei Sung
• Shanghai to Ohio: The Many Worlds of Woo Chong Yung / C.Y. Woo (1898–1989) by Julia F. Andrews
• A Glorious Shanghai by Kuiyi Shen
• The Symbolic Language of Woo’s Flower and Bird Paintings by Hou-mei Sung
• Entries by Hou-mei Sung, Julia F. Andrews, and Kuiyi Shen: Paintings; Calligraphy; Seals and Sword
• Chronology
• Selected Bibliography
• Index