This visitor admires paintings on display at a Sino-Japanese art exhibition held at the Shanghai Wu Changshuo Memorial in Lujiazui, Shanghai, on May 19-23. [Photo/Pudong Times]

A Sino-Japanese painting and calligraphy exhibition took place at the Shanghai Wu Changshuo Memorial, located in Lujiazui, the city's Pudong New Area, from May 19 to 23.

The event came together through the joint effort of Shanghai Wu Changshuo Memorial and Japan's Beppu Art Museum to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan.

Five prestigious Chinese and Japanese artists displayed 50 works, covering a range of genres including oil paintings, calligraphic works, and traditional Chinese paintings.

The artists involved were Wu Chao and Wu Yue, the great grandsons of Wu Changshuo, Liang Jinqing, a famous Shanghai oil painter, Nishimura Shunichi, curator of Beppu Art Museum, and Arakane Dairin, an honorary professor at Beppu University and president of Beppu Art Association.

Arakane Dairin also donated one of his works of calligraphy to the Shanghai Wu Changshuo Memorial during the opening ceremony of the exhibition on May 19. He said that having studied Wu's art for the past 50 years, he owes his love of Chinese aesthetics to Wu Changshuo.

Zhang Ruichun, deputy head of Pudong publicity department, said that the exhibition was the result of Pudong and Beppu's joint efforts to promote Sino-Japanese cultural exchange.

The friendly relationship between Pudong and Beppu can traced back to 1997 when the Shanghai Wu Changshuo Memorial launched cultural exchanges with Beppu University.

Over the past two decades, exchange and cooperation has gone from strength to strength through efforts across a range of fields including culture, education, tourism, and trade.