Dates: Through Feb. 20

Hours: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Closed Monday

Add: He Xiangning Art Museam, Overseas Chinese Town, Shennan Thoroughfare, Nanshan District (南山区华侨城何香凝美术馆)

Metro: Hua Qiao Cheng Station (Overseas Chinese Town Station, 华侨城站), Exit C

Newman Huo

AN art exhibition in the He Xiangning Art Museum may show visitors how much Chinese portrait artists today focus on painting ordinary people.

Xu Weixin, 50, vice president of Xu Beihong Art College of the Renmin University of China in Beijing, presented two huge realistic portraits from his influential series “Contemporary Chinese People” at the exhibition. One is a portrait of an armed police soldier and the other a portrait of a miner.

Xu graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1987. In his recent works, he has abandoned the creation of group paintings on modern Chinese history which he was quite familiar with over the past several decades.

“I think it is particularly significant for me to consciously paint contemporary ordinary Chinese people with the large format that was often used for late Chinese leaders, and advocate the spirit that all human beings are equal,” he said.

A graduate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1987, Sun Weimin, 62, likes to paint portraits of northern Chinese farmers.

Ke Limu, 61, president of the College of Fine Arts at the Xinjiang Academy of Art, is particularly fond of painting people of the minorities in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region using impressionist methods and techniques.

Guo Beiping, 59, a professor of the Xi’an Academy of Art in Shaanxi Province has stuck to the realistic style, pursuing classic beauty in his portraits over the past few years.

Jin Shanyi, 74, a retired professor from the Central Academy of Art in Beijing and one of the country’s leading portrait painters, presented three of his recent works at the exhibition.

“Portrait art, a genre imported from abroad, has made a great leap forward in China since the country carried out the opening up and reform policies in the early 1980s,” said Jin.

The exhibition, which will run until Feb. 20, features 140 portraits by 52 artists mainly from the country’s leading art colleges.