Adding to the atmosphere of the upcoming Spring Festival, Tibetan Thangka master painter Tseten Namgyal's solo art show is being held at the Art Gallery of the Chaoyang District Culture Centre in downtown Beijing. The exhibition runs from 10 am to 7 pm daily until February 13.

On display are at least 80 of the painter's works selected from the past few years, according to Chodron Wangmo, deputy director of the Tibetan Folk Artists Association, who organized the show in collaboration with the gallery.

Thangka, a kind of scroll painting mounted on silk, bears a distinctive artistic and religious flavour. It is a very popular local art form in the Tibet Autonomous Region and neighbouring areas such as Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan provinces.

Done with natural and mineral colors, the Thangka paintings cover a wide range of themes taken from Tibetan history, social life, personages (including religious figures), folk customs, astronomy, the Tibetan calendar and traditional Tibetan medicine.

Tseten Namgyal was born in 1960 in a peasant's family in Lunzhub County and began to learn the Thangka art at the age of 19 in Lhasa from the eighth generation master painter Jampel Wangchug of Maintang School.

The Maintang School is the most influential Thangka painting school in Tibet and its creative credits include most murals in Lhasa's Jokhang, Sera, Ganden and Drepung monasteries, Potala Palace, and Norbulingka Summer Palace.

Nowadays, more and more people from home and abroad are interested in China's diverse ethnic and folk cultures, including Tibetan culture.

"By holding this exhibition, one of a series of Tibetan art projects to come, we hope to help the viewers gain a better understanding of the best genuine Tibetan arts and culture and hopefully attract them to pay a personal visit to Tibet," Chodron Wangmo told China Daily last weekend in Beijing.

(China Daily January 27, 2006)