Yangzhou school

Over the 17th and 18th centuries, Yangzhou in Jiangsu province boomed in economic activity. Its prosperity as a trading center and openness in culture attracted artists and cultivated many art patrons. That was how the Yangzhou school, a loose group of artists in the realm of classic Chinese painting, rose to notice. Rejecting orthodox ideas of painting, they embraced a reformative spirit to create highly individual styles, reflecting a scholarly temperament and popular taste at the time. At the center of the Yangzhou school were the "eight eccentrics", who marked their brushwork with brief sketches and renditions of the smaller aspects of nature. An exhibition now on at Shanxi Museum, in provincial capital Taiyuan, surveys the formation of the Yangzhou school and its revolutionary ideas that cast a long influence on Chinese painting. It shows paintings from the collections of Shanxi Museum and Tianjin Museum. The exhibition ends on March 19.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays. 13 Binhe West Road North Section, Taiyuan, Shanxi province.