A People's commune, a backyard steel furnace, and the construction of dams and irrigation works are typical symbols of the Great Leap Forward and the early stage of the "cultural revolution" in the 1950s and 1960s.

They are also vividly portrayed in the works of renowned Chinese painters such as Guan Shanyue (1912-1991) and Qian Songyan (1898-1985), who were still in their heyday as artists when the political campaigns took place.

An exhibition, featuring more than 200 works produced by Guan, Qian and other painters from Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces and Beijing in the late 1950s and early 1960s, is being displayed at Guan Shanyue Art Gallery, reported Shenzhen Daily.

"The exhibition took me back to the unforgettable splendid and glorious years," said visitor Chen Lianzhang, a retired engineer who moved to the city from Hunan Province in 1984.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Chinese painters began to make innovations in socialist landscape painting in a reply to the requirement that art must serve both people and politics.

In the following 30 years, a large number of new landscape paintings were produced, in which bustling cities and countryside scenes were combined with natural scenery.

"Representing a special period of socialist revolution and construction, these works are unique in China's art history because they are different from both traditional Chinese landscape paintings, which lasted from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), to the Republic of China (1911-1949), and those avant-garde Chinese landscape paintings, which emerged in the 1980s," said Chai Fengchun, curator of Guan Shanyue Art Gallery.

The works on display are the best examples of how Chinese landscape painters used the medium of traditional Chinese painting to depict China's new life and landscape, Chai said.

The exhibition is on until Nov. 12.

(Shenzhen Daily October 20, 2004)