Last Sunday morning, the opening ceremony of a veteran oil artist's retrospective solo exhibition drew hundreds of visitors, young and old, professional and amateur, from Beijing and other Chinese cities to the National Art Museum of China.

On show are about 200 oil paintings, sketches, ink drawings and photos by Ai Zhongxin (1915-2003). Some of them are seen for the first time, even by most of his former colleagues and students.

"His works give viewers a picture of the man's life as a veteran artist and art educator. He remained humble and modest during his lifetime, shunning any retrospective solo exhibition in his late years," says Pan Gongkai, president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and chief organizer of the exhibition.

Like many older Chinese artists, Ai's personal life was closely linked to tumultuous 20th century Chinese history. His art vividly mirrors the remarkable social changes of the country, writes oil painter and Ai's student Zhong Han in the catalogue of Ai's solo show.

"Ai is an innovator for modern Chinese painting, a respected educator of great devotion and capability, and also a typical modern Chinese intellectual who cherished a deep love for the land and its people," Zhong summarized.

Gifted artist

Born in 1915 in suburban Shanghai, Ai was the son of a rural primary school teacher. He developed a keen interest in drawing and painting when he was 6. He began to learn techniques of Chinese ink painting from school teachers five years later.

In 1934 Ai's first political caricature ridiculing former Fascist ruler Benito Mussolini of Italy was published in Shanghai Comic and Caricature magazine. That convinced Ai, then a chemistry major at Shanghai Datong University, to take seriously the goal of being an artist.

The following year a barrage of Ai's political caricatures and drawings of rural life and people appeared in magazines and newspapers in Shanghai and elsewhere.

At that time, he met Chinese comic artist and caricaturist Zhang Guangyu, who gave him encouragement and professional advice, Ai recalled in his later essays.

In 1936, Ai was admitted to the Teachers' School of Nanjing-based Central University of China, now Nanjing University. He spent four years there learning both Chinese and Western art from a roster of master Chinese painters including Xu Beihong (1895-1953), Wu Zuoren (1909-89), Fu Baoshi (1904-65) and Zhang Shuqi (1900-1957).

Two years later, "Boat Trackers on the Jialingjiang River," a Chinese ink painting jointly created by Ai and, Zhang Shuqi, was put on show in Moscow.

After his graduation in 1940, Ai taught at the Chongqing branch of the university during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and became an assistant to Xu Beihong two years later.

In early 1945, at the dawn of the anti-fascist war, Ai traveled to Central China's Hunan Province and captured war-time images of Chinese army officers, soldiers and rural Chinese people.

In 1946, he became director of the arts section of the Shanghai Times daily newspaper, attended his first art exhibition and published his first paper on art in wartime.

Later in 1946, Ai moved to Beijing and taught at the Beijing Art School, now called the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1948, Ai poured his enthusiasm into work for Progress Art Weekly as he sensed the coming of a new age in China.

After New China was founded on October 1, 1949, Ai, like many of his peers, put his heart into both his work in academy and social activities.

During the first decade of New China, Ai created some of his best oil paintings depicting China's leaders and ordinary people, which later critics labeled Chinese Socialist Realism.

To better understand social change, Ai spent time living and chatting with factory workers, coal miners, and rural villagers.

In 1954, Ai visited a bustling construction site in Wuwei, Gansu Province, for a railroad leading to Urumqi, capital of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The visit inspired him to create his masterpiece, "Road to Urumqi," typical of his later "panoramic landscape painting."

Most of Ai's works involved on-site research, interviews with army veterans who participated in the actual events, and piles of documents, Ai later wrote in an essay.

In 1954, Ai became dean of the Oil Painting Department of the newly-established Central Academy of Fine Arts. As an art educator, Ai adopted a rich variety of ways to train his students, researchers say.

"Professor Ai was one of my best-loved teachers at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He taught not only the art of oil painting but also how to be a man of integrity," said Jin Shangyi, chairman of the Chinese Artists' Association, at the opening ceremony of the retrospective show.

It was Ai who introduced art studio mentoring to the academy, where most students were instructed by teachers individually rather than in groups.

In 1955, Ai invited Russian oil painters to lecture at the academy, in hope of laying a more solid foundation in basic skills for his students.

Besides his busy schedule as an educator and social activist, Ai studied the history of Chinese oil painting and published many articles and books on the subject.

In 1956, Ai co-operated with Wu Zuoren on an oil mural for the dome of Beijing Observatory. But the work, deemed a perfect synthesis of Western techniques with Chinese aesthetics, was destroyed during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), during which Ai also endured some of his hardest days.

Personal mark

Even in difficult conditions, Ai did not give up painting with his own style.

Ai had always tried to put a strong personal mark on his socialist realist paintings.

Unlike many of his contemporaries who also were caught in the political whirlwind of the 1960s and 1970s, Ai avoided overly bright colors and exaggerated manners. He continued with his trademark balanced, calculated approach.

"A painter should not paint only in his studio. He must go out and meet people and nature, the fountain of inspiration for his art," Ai once told his students.

Apart from his artistic achievement in oil paint, Ai also is known for his Chinese ink paintings and seal-carving skill.

"Ai is an icon for me. But not until today have I had such an intimate contact with his art," said oil painter Yang Feiyun, some of whose works are on display at a group show of realistic oil paintings at the same museum.

"A comparison between his work and ours immediately reveals that we, artists of a younger generation, have a long way to go before we can find our own voices."

In August, 2003, four months before his passing away, Ai received a Lifetime Achievement Jincai Award issued by the All China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Chinese Artists' Association.

(China Daily November 17, 2005)