The Lingnan School: The Awakening of Modern China

From 20 March to 28 June 2015.

Last great school of traditional Chinese painting, the Lingnan School was born in Guangdong (now Canton region), a province long open to international trade and foreign influences. At the beginning of the XXe century, Chen Shuren and the two Gao brothers, Gao Jianfu and Gao Qifeng, are worried about China's political and cultural exhaustion.
Like many of their contemporary artists and thinkers, they turn to Japan to rebuild a Chinese modernity. They are inspired by Nihonga, renovating movement of traditional Japanese painting, and develop an original pictorial style.
The Lingnan School is enriched with naturalistic subjects specific to Japanese sensibility. In addition, themes inspired by contemporary news, and others featuring the people in their daily activities, occupy a hitherto unprecedented place in Chinese art. The rise of nationalism, in response to the loss of authority of the Manchu state and in the face of foreign interference, leads these artists to question the social and political implications of their work and to tackle the tragic events of France head-on. history in motion.

Thanks to the rich collection of the Hong Kong Museum and the loan of Japanese works by European museums and private collectors, the Cernuschi Museum will trace the birth of this school and the complexity of its inscription in a turbulent political context that gives it its artistic significance as much as historical.