The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 23, 2025

A Great River (Yi Tiao Dahe) (from series Repetitions)

1986

Xu Bing

(Chinese, b. 1955)
China
Woodcut print with ink on paper
Image: 53.5 x 73.7 cm (21 1/16 x 29 in.); Sheet: 66.7 x 91.2 cm (26 1/4 x 35 7/8 in.)
Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift 2020.160
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Xu created this series for his MFA degree at the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing.

Description

Xu created five Series of Repetitions to explore the process of printmaking. He printed images of the series in different stages, each time carving away a little bit more of the block’s surface. The first print is the darkest; the final one is the lightest with the image being entirely effaced. This print represents a stage in the process when the image was most legible. Some prints show Chinese characters, indications for his later works featuring writing and language called “landscripts”—images made with script.

As a child, Xu had access to a world of books: his mother worked in the library and his father in the history department at Peking University. Toward the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1974, Xu was sent to a rural village north of Beijing for “re-education.” The Cultural Revolution taught him the power of words and text, while the interruption of his formal schooling gave him time to practice writing and teach himself woodcut techniques.
  • ?–2015
    (Booklyn, Inc., Brooklyn, NY, sold to Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley)
    2015–2020
    Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley, Shaker Heights, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    2020–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Von Spee, Clarissa. "Chinese Ceramics and Works on Paper." In The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, edited by Heather Lemonedes Brown, 194-229. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 224-227; Mentioned: p. 275
  • Impressionism to Modernism: The Keithley Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 11, 2022-January 8, 2023).
  • {{cite web|title=A Great River (Yi Tiao Dahe) (from series Repetitions)|url=false|author=Xu Bing|year=1986|access-date=23 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2020.160