Art masters of modern China sparkle at phenomenal painting and calligraphy exhibition

To provide a panoramic view of the evolution of 20th-century Chinese art at one single exhibition sounds too ambitious to realize, while curators of Blazing New Trails (Yiqi Shanlin), a hit art show at Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, have made the best of themselves to present this tremendous landscape of Chinese ink traditions.

The much-talked about exhibition, running through Oct 16, pays tribute to those trailblazers active in the art circles of the previous century.

A display of some 200 works of Chinese painting and calligraphy unfolds an extensive scene in which one will see the work, career and life of over 40 prominent figures, such as Zhang Daqian, Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong and Wu Zuoren, to name a few, whose reforms in the techniques and styles of classic Chinese brushwork reshaped the look of Chinese art, pushing it even forward on the international stage.