An oracle bone with inscriptions about a Shang era king's concerns with praying, hunting and weather. [PHOTO BY JIANG DONG/CHINA DAILY]

By doing so, Zao sought to find a resonance with the highly expressive, minimalist style of modern art to build a communication between the Eastern spirit and Western culture.

Zao's oracle bone series raised his profile in international art circuits. Although he soon moved on to explore a much more abstract style, the simple, mysterious beauty of the pictorial symbols from these ancient bones continued to be an evocative theme in his paintings.

Zao utilized his strokes in oil pigments to convey the charm of the oracle bone scripts to people outside of China. Curators at the National Museum of China have made similar efforts to provide access to today's audiences to this ancient system of writing in a number of ways.

Like Zao, who was inspired to create his oracle bone series of paintings that are avidly collected by museums and private buyers around the world, contemporary artists and designers have found ever more diverse ways to bring about a modern revival of the oracle bone scripts.

The Beijing museum has mounted an exhibition which runs through Dec 22 to mark the 120th anniversary of the discovery of the oracle bones.

Oracle bone inscriptions were the religious records kept by the people of the Shang (c. 16th century-11th century BC) and Zhou (c. 11th century-256 BC) dynasties. They also provide important clues to the formation of Chinese characters and the grammar of Chinese language. They were added to the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 2017.

The National Museum is displaying more than 190 oracle bones and archaic bronze artifacts, pottery works and carved jade objects pertaining to the history of the Shang and Zhou eras, largely drawn from its own collection but also from other cultural institutions, such as the National Library of China and the Nanjing Museum. The inscriptions on the bronze vessels and jade pieces display the continuous influence of the oracle bone scripts through the centuries.