A brush with originality

"Sometimes when he saw work by a young artist and quite liked it, he exchanged it with his own. He didn't feel the privilege of being a well-established artist, nor that his work carried more value," Wang says.

He says Yang was the kind of man who did more and talked less. "He never changed, in spite of the achievements in his creation and social status. When his old friends, or those herdsmen he knew from Inner Mongolia, came to visit him in Beijing, they carried on their friendship as before.

"He was born to paint. His spirit will never stop its journey to freedom."