Photo: Snapshot of China News

A total of 100 Thangka, Tibetan Buddhist paintings on cotton or silk, went on display at an exhibition in Lhasa, capital city of Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, on Friday.

The Thangka were created by Tenpa Rabten, an inheritor of this national intangible cultural heritage and a professor at the Art Department of Tibet University, and his students, China News reported.The earliest works of this exhibition were created in the early 1990s, and the latest is a work from this year," said Lobsang Tashi, director of the Art Department of Tibet University.

Tenpa Rabten has trained more than 500 Thangka painters over the past 30 years. As the first professor at the Art College of Tibet University, he helped establish a theoretical foundation for the construction of the Tibetan art major.

In 1980, Tenpa Rabten successfully opened a free public welfare school dedicated to these traditional paintings. This move set a precedent for Thangka to go from a family inheritance to a type of community inheritance.