Painting exhibition marks a family's commitment to Chinese ink tradition

Touched by Nature, Empowered by Tradition, an exhibition at Rong Bao Zhai, Beijing, until Dec 27, pays tribute to a family's devotion to reform and modernize classical Chinese paintings and its inheritance.

On show are some 70 landscape paintings by Li Keran, his son Li Xiaohe and resident artists from Li Xiaoke's studio, unfolding a dynamic view of Chinese ink traditions in revival.

Li Keran is one of the most important figures of 20th-century Chinese art who spared no efforts to usher the mountain-and-water genre of classical ink paintings into a modern context.

Li Xiaoke observed and worked closely with his father, while accompanying him to visit and paint extensively at home and abroad. Li Xiaoke himself carved a niche in the world of art for his paintings which depict the landscapes of the Tibet autonomous region.

The reformative spirit of the father and the son has inspired many who join a studio established by Li Xiaoke and continue their experiment to explore more possibilities of Chinese landscape paintings.