A watercolor painting, portraying clashes between Chinese and Japanese air forces, by Liang Youming.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"He also studied Japanese planes and the weather when the battles took place. He saw himself as a recorder of history. He painted only based on the facts."

The works have been displayed nationwide since 2013; the younger Liang donated them to the National Museum of China just before the exhibition's opening.

"They belong to the whole nation," he says. "Hopefully, more young people get to know this chapter of history."

Relay, another exhibition－now at the National Art Museum of China－happens to respond to Liang's hope. It displays artworks by middle-aged and young teachers with the Central Academy of Fine Arts, based on their visits to the old battlefields and relic sites relevant to the war.

Xu Beihong, the noted painter who headed the CAFA from 1946 to 1953, held many sales of his paintings to raise funds for the Chinese army during the war of resistance. His successors today express their insights into the cruelty of war by working with a wider range of art mediums.

One may feel the lingering horror of war when seeing Lu Liang's oil on canvas, Devil's Cave. He painted a former lab where Unit 731, the notorious Japanese biological-warfare team, carried out lethal human experiments in northeastern China during the war.

The CAFA's architecture department shows a public space design modeled for the Wanping City station of Beijing's Subway Line 16 now under construction. Wanping, a historical walled fortress in Beijing's suburb, is where the "July 7 Incident of 1937" took place. A video tells how designers created the final design－a dialog between Wanping's war history and the current life of its inhabitants.

If you go

War and Art

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays, until Sept 30.

National Museum of China, east of Tian'anmen Square, Dongcheng district, Beijing.

010-6511-6188.

Relay

9 am-5 pm, until July 15.

National Art Museum of China, 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district, Beijing.

010-6400-1476.