While attending the Maksimov class, Chen Beixin created Dusk, a painting now on display, which depicts a coal mine in Beijing's Mentougou district.

Explaining why he included a large area of sky in the painting, he says he was reenacting the feeling of coal miners, whom he spent a lot of time with: "After working underground for a long time, one would feel the sky looks rather bright and high. To show the reality and their true feelings was what Maksimov emphasized in his lectures."

When the two-year program ended in 1957, Maksimov and some of his students traveled to Wuhan, Hubei province, as well as to Sichuan province, the Huashan Mountain in Shaanxi province, and Sanmenxia in Henan province, before reaching Chongqing, the last stop of the trip, where Maksimov bid farewell to his disciples and flew home.

The class is remembered as two years of a shared pursuit of beauty by artists from different cultural backgrounds, "the stories of which we need to tell the next generations as a precious heritage", says Cao Qinghui, the exhibition's curator and a professor of the academy.

Contact the writer at linqi@chinadaily.com.cn