Zhu Guangqian

Zhu Guangqian (朱光潛; 19 September 1897 – 6 March 1986) was a scholar and theoretician of aesthetics in 20th-century China.

History Zhu was born in Tongcheng, Anhui in 1897 and graduated from the Anhui Province Tongcheng Secondary School. After earning his BA from Hong Kong University in 1922, Later, he returned to China to write The Psychology of Art , On Poetry , and A History of Western Aesthetics , Letters on Beauty .

In the 1930s in Beijing, Zhu Guangqian hosted a literary salon that met monthly to recite prose and poetry, east and west. Regulars included Wen Yiduo , Chen Mengjia , Zhu Ziqing , Zheng Zhenduo , Feng Zhi , Shen Congwen , Bing Xin , Ling Shuhua , Bian Zhilin , Lin Huiyin and Xiao Qian . These were pivotal figures in Republican literature, and it can perhaps be argued that the salon was important to the formation of the so-called Beijing style literature of the period.

Zhu was one of the earliest post-Cultural Revolution Chinese proponents of Marxist humanism and "aesthetic humanism," many of whom had previously been persecuted for their humanist writings.

Portrait Zhu Guangqian. A Portrait by Kong Kai Ming at Portrait Gallery of Chinese Writers (Hong Kong Baptist University Library)