Photo: Snapshot of China News

The Shaanxi Provincial Museum of Fine Arts and the China Cultural Center in Nepal are hosting a new online exhibition of Ansai modern folk paintings, an art form from Shaanxi to promote cultural exchanges made possible by China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Blossoms on the Rural Land - Exhibition of Ansai Farmer Painting Collection of Shaanxi Provincial Art Museum features 70 folk paintings selected from the large collection of folk art at the Shaanxi Province Art Museum. 

This online exhibition integrates elements of science and technology, art and humanitiesin four sections: Caring for Nature, Everyday Life, Farmers’ Fantasy and Museum Director on the Farmer Painting Works,” focusing on the lively festival scenes and splendor of the farmers in Ansai, a district in Yan’an, Northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. 

Ni Na, deputy director of the Animation Department at the Arts College of Henan University, told the Global Times on Thursday that Ansai modern folk painting, including Ansai farmer painting, is an emerging folk art that developed in the late 1970s on the basis of other folk arts such as paper-cutting, embroidery and cloth toys. “It is an artistic form of both the traditional Chinese thinking, modeling, technique and color, and modern painting consciousness.”

“Bright colors, content that is related to Chinese cultural traditions and full composition are three common characteristics of folk paintings,” Yang Jingang, an expert from Tianjin People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, told the Global Times on Thursday. 

The colorful folk exhibition will allow the Nepalese people to truly feel the profoundness of Shaanxi without leaving home, and appreciate the unique charm of Shaanxi folk art, China News reported on Thursday.

Shaanxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and the Chinese Cultural Center of Nepal have been working together to organize a series of high-quality online cultural and tourism exchange activities around Shaanxi’s historical, cultural and tourism resources in 2021, under the guidance of cultural and tourism communication of the Belt and Road Initiative.

This is the second online exhibition following one on "QIN-Terracotta Warriors' Past and Present Modern Art Exhibition" — China’s Terracotta Warriors, a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China.