Honoring China's art pioneers

Exhibition curators did their best to locate the works of some 40 artists, and to loan around 200 paintings and sculptures from museums, galleries and private collectors. The youngest artists featured at the show, Liu Ziming and Lyu Xiaguang, died five years ago, both aged 87.

Philippe Cinquini, the exhibition's French co-curator, who oversees a section that features the works of those French artists who once mentored Chinese students, says each work at the show tells an individual part of history, a journey of adventure and of courageous young men and women crossing continents and oceans to realize a dream of art.

Featured artists include household names, such as Xu Beihong, who was an influential figure on China's course to independence, and Liu Kaiqu, the first director of the National Art Museum of China and a sculptor who participated in several of the country's public projects, including the Monument to the People's Heroes at Tian'anmen Square.

The exhibition also marks those little known artists who died shortly after their career just began, and only a handful of their works have survived.

Shao Dazhen, a pre-eminent art theorist and professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, says the Chinese artists in France formed a noticeable force to signal Chinese society's attempt to know about the modern world.