What's on

Confronting adversity

The exhibition, Enjoyable Journey After Passing Great Hurdles in Life, in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, summarizes the attitude of the late ink artist Song Wenzhi (1919-99). He didn't receive formal training in painting but taught himself and learned from ancient artists and leading painters of his time. He experienced ups and downs and optimistically confronted and sailed through difficult situations, depicting his experiences in his landscape paintings.

The exhibition at Shenzhen Art Museum's new venue until April 6 focuses on his paintings of rivers and streams through the high mountains that embody an optimistic tendency toward hardships.

Song is recognized as a core member of the New Jinling School of Painting, which gathered prominent painters hailing from and active in Nanjing, referred to as Jinling, in Jiangsu province. The artists' group inherited the techniques of the Jinling School that emerged in the 17th century while adapting it to exploring aspects of social life in the 1950s and '60s.

10 am-6 pm, closed on Mondays.30 Tenglong Lu, Longhua district, Shenzhen, Guangdong province.0755-2806-2004.

Vibrant colors

Zhang Daqian (1899-1983) is one of the most popular Chinese artists of all time and is also internationally renowned. His works are displayed in museums and galleries around the world. He traveled and lived extensively — from China and Europe to Brazil and the United States, making him highly regarded as a skilled and consummate painter of various styles.

Zhejiang Art Museum in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, opened Transcendent Spiritual Realm, an exhibition tracing Zhang's legendary life and how this shaped his art world, promoting him to become a great figure of 20th-century Chinese art.

The exhibition, running until Feb 16, shows his extraordinary techniques, which were grounded in his intensified studies of ancient artists — his copies of their landscape paintings were sometimes mistaken for originals. He was inspired by the Dunhuang murals in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu province. He employed the smooth lining and vibrant colors of figures depicted in the caves to create a body of female portraits deemed classics of modern art. His pocai (splashed colors) painting peaked in the later years of his career.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays.138 Nanshan Lu, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. 0571-8707-8700.

Father and son

Lotus is a recurring motif in the works of Pan Tianshou (1897-1971) as he modernized the flower-and — bird genre.

His semiabstract strokes possess a majestic spirit of tenacity in the paintings. His son Pan Gongkai continues to experiment with lotus and his approach is even more abstract and minimalist.

The works of father and son artists are now on display at the Pan Tianshou Art Center, a new addition to the cultural scene in Zhejiang province situated in Pan Tianshou's hometown of Ninghai county in Ningbo.

The architecture, resembling a lotus from high above, was designed by Pan Gongkai.

Pan Tianshou's paintings include his donations to Ninghai and collections from other institutions such as the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where he taught for many years.

The exhibition is a celebration of a family's commitment to conserving the ink tradition.

9 am-4:30 pm, closed on Mondays. 66 Tianming Zhonglu, Ninghai county, Ningbo, Zhejiang province.