Product Review

In the waning days of the Qing dynasty (1644 1911), China s first formal art schools were founded in an atmosphere of spirited debate about tradition, reform, and what it meant to be an artist in that culture. The painter Chao Shao-an (1905 1998) came of age following this upheaval. A leader in the modernist movement, Chao strove, like his masters, both to learn from nature [and to] be inspired by [an] inner sensibility. In his mid-twenties he established the Lingnan Art Studio in order to advance this fresh and vital approach.