Zhu Xinjian remembered for simple approach

Zhu Xinjian's first major solo exhibition was opened at the Today Art Museum, displaying his some 200 Chinese paintings, calligraphy scrolls, manuscripts and sketches.

Zhu Xinjian (1953-2014) said he once decorated his scrapbook with a painting by Qi Baishi (1864-1957), which he cut out from newspapers, together with a photo of naked women. By doing so, he wished to use the free, lofty brushwork of Chinese painting, which ancient literati employed to portray landscape and aloofness, to express lust as a fundamental desire of mankind that earlier painters normally shunned.

Considered shameless by some and genuine by others, Zhu had painted human's basic needs, sex in particular, for more than two decades. He is most famous for portraying nude modern beauties with rough - sometimes exaggerated - strokes of ink.

A representative of the "New Literati Painting" movement, he stripped the hypocrisy and pretense of literati painting traditions and enlivened the art school with a playful and down-to-earth approach.

Two months after he died of lung cancer earlier this year, Zhu's first major solo exhibition was opened at the Today Art Museum, displaying his some 200 Chinese paintings, calligraphy scrolls, manuscripts and sketches.

The Modern Recluse: Hermit Spirits of Zhu Xinjian exhibition has a Chinese title of distinctive Zhu style which reads, "Live Like an Immortal, Except for Eating". (Fairies were described as not needing to eat or drink by ancient Chinese.)

Zhu wrote the phrase in calligraphy and picked it as the exhibition's theme. He didn't intend to lead a life disconnected from the world like fairies do, but to live as lightheartedly as they would.

If you go

10 am-6 pm, until April 22. Today Art Museum, 32 Baiziwan Lu (Road), Chaoyang district, Beijing. 010-5876-0600 Ext 100.