Companions in color: lifelong alliance forges duo's vivid styles

With their paint brushes in hand for some 60 years, Zhao Wenliang, 81, and Yang Yushu, 74, have experienced the dramatic changes in social history and artistic discourse since the 1950s.

And with little formal training, the duo remain largely self-taught, which helped them develop their independent styles quite different from the mainstream taste for realism favored in that era.

While they remained marginalized and poor throughout their lives, the duo persisted with painting. And their artworks and life experiences are soon to be shown again at the Inside-Out Art Museum in Beijing, which opens on March 24.