Spring exhibition reviews art over six decades

After seeing the annual Spring Exhibition of Painting held at the Beijing Fine Arts Academy in 1961, noted novelist and dramatist Lao She said the works on show presented "a new air and new glow", and "passionately, the painters depicted unprecedented achievements the country achieved in socialist construction".

The latest Spring Exhibition of Painting, now underway at the academy's art museum until April 24, gives a review of the progress of Chinese art which the academy has stayed committed to over the past six decades. 

On show are the mountain-and-water and flower-and-bird genres of classical Chinese paintings, ink figure paintings and oil works by 31 resident artists. 

The annual exhibition was first organized in 1959 to carry on Chinese cultural traditions and open up new paths to make Chinese art even more diverse.