WHILE the noted Chinese artist Wu Guanzhong's largest solo exhibition is underway in Hangzhou, the joint exhibition of Wu's teacher Lin Fengmian and his students began yesterday in the city as well.

The "Joint Exhibition of Lin Fengmian and His Students" held at the Art Museum of the China Academy of Art is the final and vital exhibition in a series of shows titled "The Way of China Academy of Art," which consists of three exhibitions and narrates the history of the academy from 1928 to 2010.

Lin is revered as an Asian contemporary painting master, and his style is prized for being distinctively Chinese despite his use of Western visual language. Art history scholars regard Lin as a founding father of this branch of Chinese painting that emerged in the 1930s.

Lin was born in Guangdong Province in 1900 and was considered a child prodigy in his village. When he was 20, he left for France on a work-study program. He learned French and initially paid his way by making signboards.

When he returned to China in 1926, he helped found the antecedent of the China Academy of Art, becoming its first principal, and therefore became an important innovator in the area of Chinese art education.

The exhibition is a significant activity to commemorate Lin's 110th birthday. It boasts 150 works by Lin and his students - Wu Guanzhong, Chu Teh-chun (Zhu Dequn), Zao Wou-ki (Zhao Wuji), Su Tianci and Shiy De-Jinn (Xi Dejin) - all of whom are the first batch of modern Chinese artists who blended Chinese and Western painting styles.

"Those predecessors represent the form in which Chinese culture was revived (in modern times)," said Xu Jiang, principal of the China Academy of Art, "and the exhibition manifests the spirit and meaning of the form, which means a lot to today's education and innovation of culture."

Lin's works are displayed on the first floor of the museum, and his students' works are on the second and third floors. Since a majority of the exhibits are collected from other museums and private collectors, many works are being shown for the first time in the Chinese mainland.

Studying art in France, Lin focused on oil painting early in his career. But around 1938, when China was involved in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the lack of oil painting materials forced him to use Chinese inks and rice paper instead.

While Lin worked with rice paper and inks, he broke with the conventions of the time by, among other methods, favoring a square format as opposed to the usual long scrolls and employing bright hues.

"When Lin Fengmian virtually abandoned oils for the Chinese brush and gouache, with which ideas and feelings could be expressed with so much more swiftness and spontaneity, he came still closer to the ideals of Chinese scholar-painter, while his idiom was thoroughly contemporary," Michael Sullivan, a British art historian and one of the major Western pioneers in the field of modern Chinese art history and criticism, once wrote in his book "Art and Artists of Twentieth-century China."

Ladies

Because of his advanced art concept, his works were not accepted by the mass public then and he was criticized in the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), and his works and life met with great tragedy.

While many of his early works were destroyed by Japanese soldiers during the anti-Japanese war, many of his later works were destroyed during the "cultural revolution." During the revolution, he had been imprisoned for more than four years. After his release in 1977, Lin slowly began to recreate many of his previously destroyed works.

So the bulk of the pieces displayed are from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The exhibition includes a fine selection of Lin's paintings of women, one of his favorite subjects. "Lady with White Lotus," created in the 1960s, depicts a beauty in a gauzy gown holding a flower.

The figure in "Naked Lady," created in the late 1950s, poses coquettishly in an outfit in turquoise, a shade that evokes European impressionists. The way the women pose results in a very un-Chinese composition and suggests Henri Matisse's paintings. Lin's ladies have long faces that have been compared to Amedeo Modigliani's works.

Wu is a leading master in 20th century Chinese painting. His distinctive painting style, having successfully assimilated Western techniques of abstraction, is both Chinese in outlook and modern in conception.

The country's noted art critic Shui Zhongtian evaluated: "Wu is obviously distinctive from his peers ? society's plan to order him to follow conventional standards always went by the board. His glaring character and restless idea of art livened the art world, and brought forth the new through the old."

Since "Wu Guanzhong's Retrospective Exhibition" is underway in Zhejiang Art Museum, some of the works of Wu in the joint exhibition are duplicates.

While Wu's works are semi-abstract and abstract, Chu and Zao paintings are non-figurations.

Chu born in 1920 in Jiangsu Province joined the China Academy of Art (then Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou) in 1935, and after graduation he finally opted for a Western painting style which at the time in China meant a choice of the Western media of oil and of color.

In 1949 Chu moved to Taiwan and in 1955 he moved to Paris. Later Chu meditated on non-figuration, on the necessity of vision rather than representation, which is indeed an essential principle of Chinese painting.

His aim, as with other important Chinese painters of his generation, was to unite Eastern and Western concepts.

Art critic, Pierre Cabanne, once wrote: "Teh-chun's works are really some kind of natural release and a poetic dedication which is dithering and ardent, not restricted by those theories, rules and limitation of visions. By using the persuading lines, he makes his vivid characters appear from his inexact paintings as well as perfecting his fantasies and imaginations. It is really surprising that there is no perspective in the way that Westerners use lines. He sees things from a distance, and then he creates multiple points, and uses superposition and multi-angles in his works."

In the late 1990s, Chu was the first artist of Chinese origin to be elected to the prestigious Acad??mie des Arts et Lettres (Art Academician of France) in Paris.

Zao, who entered the China Academy of Art the same year as Chu, was born in a cultivated family and had studied calligraphy during his childhood, and is arguably China's most important living artist.

His works, influenced by Paul Klee, are orientated to abstraction. He names them with the date in which he finishes them, and in them, masses of colors appear to materialize a creating world, like a big bang, where light structures the canvas. He often works big formats in triptychs and diptychs.

Su (1922-2006) was born in Guangdong Province. His oil painting works, no matter if it is people, still life or landscapes, all retain his consistent artistic spirit, that is to paint meanings and draw with verve.

His paintings are colorful and intangible, expressing intense oriental implication. "Su's inward world featured the concentration and quietness to converse with nature, and he did not simply blend Chinese and Western style together, rather, operated Chinese style to fuse Western art subtly, and merged Chinese traditional philosophy into oil painting, exploring a new world for oil paintings," said Fan Di'an, director of the National Art Museum of China.

Shiy's creation of abstract paintings was deeply influenced by his teacher Lin. With different subjects and media, Shiy has created countless magnificent paintings that touch people in utterly different ways.

Shiy excelled in watercolor, oil painting and wash drawing.

During his journey of artistic creation, Shiy created new styles of painting from time to time, no matter if it was portrait sketch, portrait oil on canvas, abstract painting, folklore and architecture, watercolor of flowers, or landscapes of Taiwan.

Even his teacher Lin had commented: "Shiy spoke his words of the time in paintings. He doesn't imitate, he doesn't pursue fashion, but just draws paintings frankly and honestly. He is a real artist."

Date: through December 3

Address: 218 Nanshan Rd

Admission: 2 yuan

Tel: (0571) 8716-4801