Return to roots

An exhibition by 12 of the nation's most prominent landscape painters suggests a return to the tradition of shanshui. Zhang Zixuan reports.

The group exhibition Chinese Spirit features 150 landscape oil paintings from 12 of China's most active landscape painters, revealing the traditional Chinese shanshui (mountains and waters) spirit through Western painting techniques.

All the exhibited paintings are the most recent or representative works of the artists. Views on the canvases vary, ranging from an old cottage in a remote village in Hebei province, to the arched pattern on a cathedral in France's Moret-sur-Loing.