An exhibition of works by the late Chinese artist Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), also known overseas as Chang Dai-chien, is now showing at the Museum of Chinese History in Beijing until January 5, 2002.

The exhibition includes 79 paintings from precious collections of the Taipei Museum of History, the Sichuan Museum and the Museum of Chinese History.

Among them, 60 works are from the Taipei museum and feature the artistic creations of the ink painter during the last 34 years of his life after he left the Chinese mainland to live overseas in 1949.

This is the first time that the precious art collection has been shown in the mainland and it perhaps represents a major step forward in cultural exchanges between both sides of the Taiwan Straits, according to Zhu Fenghan, a curator from the Museum of Chinese History.

It is also the first time that such a large number of Zhang Daqian's later works have been shown in the Chinese mainland.

Born in Neijiang of southwest China's Sichuan Province, Zhang Daqian is almost a household name for Chinese art lovers.

His early art bears the strong influence of traditional literati paintings. In the early 1940s, he made a bold decision to study and copy mural paintings of the Dunhuang grottoes in Northwest China and thus made his painting style more decorative and colorful.

During his later years he lived in Brazil, the United States and the Taiwan Province. It was during this period that he developed his famous modern style of "splash-ink" and "splash-color" painting with the influence of Western abstract art. His art has been exhibited widely throughout the world and his friendship with Picasso has long been praised as an artistic relationship between two modern masters of the East and the West.

Well known for his reformative spirit and unconfined personal life style, Zhang is also famous as a master forger of ancient Chinese paintings, which has created problems for many people.

Zhang possessed the broadest range of styles and techniques of any Chinese artist in history, experts say.

Since his forgeries belong to museums and private collections, learning to detect his brilliant imitations is a continual challenge to all students, scholars, and connoisseurs of Chinese painting, according to Shen C.Y. Fu, a Taiwan art historian.

(China Daily November 8, 2001)