Chao Shao-an and Chinese Painting since 1900 (Gallery 20)

After the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912, the founders of the new nation saw a crucial need to modernize Chinese educational institutions. They sent a few elite students to art academies in Europe; the artists then returned to set up schools that offered instruction in Chinese and Western traditions. As a result, both ink painting and oil painting have been key media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries for Chinese artists.