"Xu Beihong and His Times" kicks off at Yixing Art Gallery on Dec 18. [Photo/js.chinanews.com]

An exhibition on "Xu Beihong and His Times" kicked off at Yixing Art Gallery on Dec 18.

Initiated by the Central Academy of Fine Arts, the exhibition was designed to promote research on modern China's painting master Xu Beihong and Chinese art history in the 20th century. Supported by China National Arts Fund, the exhibition was scheduled to visit six major cities around China. Yixing, the hometown of Xu Beihong, was the fourth stop.

One hundred and thirty-eight original paintings and works created by Xu, his students and artists of his age were on display. There were also other traditional Chinese paintings, oil paintings, sculptures and printmaking to give people a better understanding of Xu's life and artistic ideas. Documents were exhibited to show Xu's relationships with his students and other famous artists such as Qi Baishi and Zhang Daqian.

Guo Hongmei, an associate professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, explains the exhibits to visitors. [Photo/js.chinanews.com]

Yixing art master Xu Beihong, painted by one of his friends. [Photo/js.chinanews.com]