Wu Guanzhong, one of China's greatest contemporary artists, is giving a solo exhibition at the Miro Hall of the cultural center of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization at Fontenoy Square in Paris.

The Paris show, which kicked off on Wednesday and will run until June 17, is the first of a series of exhibitions to be held in Beijing, London, New York, Berlin, Tokyo, Singapore, Taipei and Hong Kong over the next four years.

The exhibitions on the world tour, entitled "Emotion and Innovation: Wu Guanzhong's Wash Painting Career" and sponsored by the privately run Dalian Wanda Group, feature more than 70 ink-and-wash paintings created by the artist over the last three decades.

To Wu, 85, and also to contemporary Chinese ink-and-wash painting circles, the ongoing show is, to some extent, a "return to Paris" rather than a pilgrimage to the world art capital.

Since the early 1920s, the Paris art world has greatly impacted the development of Chinese arts through a number of important artists, who promoted reforms in various aspects of Chinese ancient arts after their studies in the French capital.

They include such respected names as Xu Beihong (1895-1953) and Lin Fengmian (1900-1991), who were oil painters and ink-and-wash artists at the same time, oil painter Pan Yuliang (1895-1977) and ceramic designer Peng Youxian (1906-1949).

Wu, who studied oil painting at the National Fine Arts Academy of France for three years, returned to China in 1950 and became an art educator. He worked at a number of important institutions including the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, the Architectural Department of Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal Institute of Arts and the Central Academy of Art and Design, which is today's Art Academy of Tsinghua University.

Like his teacher Lin Fengmian, who he had followed since age 16, Wu focused on the "combination of Chinese and Western styles" in his teaching, research and creation. "We followed the two styles, found their respective resources and compared their advantages and disadvantages," he recalled.

"The essence of art is the expression of human emotions. People speaking different languages can have the same feelings towards warmth and coldness.

"Chinese ink-and-wash and Western oils are just skills which should be slaves to the expression of emotions."

Wu added that Giuseppe Veronese (1854-1917), an artist from Venice, once said as he pointed to a muddy path that he could paint the golden hair of a young girl with the color of the mud, revealing the essence of color and of art.

When the artist and educator reached a peak in oil painting creation and related theoretical studies in his 40s, the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) started and Wu was forbidden from all artistic creations until 1972. At 53, he was allowed to paint for one day each week.

He then created a dozen famous oil paintings depicting rural life, as he was farming in North China's Hebei Province, on paperboard instead of canvas, and manure basket, which was used to contain excrement before serving as his table.

The easygoing artist happily accepted the nickname given to him by local farmers, as "the excrement basket painter."

He didn't pick up ink-and-wash painting until 1973, when he returned to Beijing and found his room in a crowded courtyard too small to create any oil paintings.

The oil painter found a completely new method of creation in his ink-and-wash paintings.

It's a way so out of tune with the traditions of Chinese painting, which have been dominant for almost a millennium, that he is still firmly believed by some to "not" be an ink painter, though he has become a well-known and influential artist in the area.

Borrowing elements from oil painting, Wu has experienced four periods in his exploration of ink paintings: the familiarization with ink-and-wash techniques in the 1970s, the silver period in the 1980s, the black period in the early 1990s and the period of integration of today, remarked Beijing-based art critic Jia Fangzhou.

Jia said Wu's works in the 1970s featured complicated compositions, meticulous details and were applied with strong colors, and in the 1980s they became abstract, lightly inked and simple.

In the early 1990s, Wu returned to complicated compositions and strong colors, which made his pictures almost a black world, and since the late 1990s he has combined characteristics of the silver period with the black period and wandered freely between abstract styles and detailed depictions, Jia said.

His work "Paddy Fields in Western Hunan Province," which was created in 1990, represents the style of the silver period with simple, elegant ink lines, drawn with calligraphic brushwork, dancing throughout the picture.

The painting looks cheerful and lively, dotted with small patches of ink and colors that represent houses and plants.

The "Hometown of Shakespeare," which he created in 1992, represents a transitional stage between the silver and black periods. It bears almost no resemblance to traditional ink paintings except the application of ink-and-wash materials.

The artist, 73 at the time, created a half-abstract world of 16th-century houses set in Stratford, England with simple and almost uniform vertical and horizontal ink lines.

"The Lotus Pond," created in 1995, employed a combination of the silver and black periods. The patches of ink that represented lotus leaves, painted with varying degrees of darkness among dots of yellow and green, shows the artist's freedom in combining Western abstract art with Chinese materials and styles.

"As I get older and older, all the worldly temptations and worries disappear and I am getting back to the pure and crazy heart of my youth. I feel really comfortable now - it's some kind of relief felt by the Buddha," he said while explaining the "freedom" expressed in his works.

"I believe now tradition is a river - it's not a river flowing downwards to a certain place, but one that flows upward and collides with the downward currents and rocks all the way," he said. "So-called 'tradition' should change with the times, as a stagnant tradition leads only to a silent death."

Pictures created by Wu in his different periods of creations all have a refreshing and lively look, which can only be achieved by an artist who has maintained a purity of spirit and an enthusiasm toward life through all the hardships he or she endured.

"Wu is an artist who depicts happiness," remarked late art critic Hsiung Ping-ming (1922-2002), who was himself a renowned Paris-based artist and art professor.

(China Daily June 4, 2004)