Yan Han is a Chinese artist and teacher. Yan taught at North China University and then at the Lu Xun Academy of Art (Shenyang

Shenyang

Shenyang , or Mukden , is the capital and largest city of Liaoning Province in Northeast China. Currently holding sub-provincial administrative status, the city was once known as Shengjing or Fengtianfu...

); from 1949, he taught first at the National Art Academy, Hangzhou

Hangzhou

Hangzhou , formerly transliterated as Hangchow, is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Governed as a sub-provincial city, and as of 2010, its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 8.7 million people...

, and then, in 1950, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Yan participated in the First Congress of the All-China Art Workers' Association, held in 1949. His official posts have included chairman of the Chinese Printmakers' Association and standing director of the Chinese Artists' Association.

Yan Han began studying Chinese art

Chinese art

Chinese art is visual art that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in China or by Chinese artists or performers. Early so-called "stone age art" dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. This early period was followed by a series of art...

 and Western painting

Western painting

The history of Western painting represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from antiquity. Until the mid-19th century it was primarily concerned with representational and Classical modes of production, after which time more modern, abstract and conceptual forms gained favor.Developments...

 in 1935 at the National Art Academy, Hangzhou, then the center in China for teaching Western modernist styles. After war with Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 broke out, he went to Yan'an

Yan'an

Yan'an , is a prefecture-level city in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China, administering several counties, including Zhidan County , which served as the Chinese communist capital before the city of Yan'an proper took that role....

 and, in 1938, entered the Lu Xun Academy of Literature and Arts to learn woodblock printing

Woodblock printing

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper....

. In 1939 Yan went to the Taihang Mountains

Taihang Mountains

The Taihang Mountains are a Chinese mountain range running down the eastern edge of the Loess Plateau in Henan, Shanxi and Hebei provinces. The range extends over 400 km from north to south and has an average elevation of 1,500 to 2,000 meters. The principal peak is Xiao Wutaishan...

 (in the Hebei-Shanxi border area), where he created woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

s at the Eighth Army Headquarters with other graduates of the Lu Xun Woodcut Workers' Group.