A show of Zhao Yitang's Paintings will open on Monday at the China National Art Museum in Beijing.

Zhao who has worked as a fine arts teacher for four decades, has achieved great success both in his teaching career and his art, which is rich with the painter's own special characteristics.

"Zhao is a diligent and prolific painter," said Shao Jingkun, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

"With a variety of themes, his paintings are good both in conception and depiction, and in perceptual co-ordination and expression."

His paintings are lively in the presentation of the human figure, rich in color and varied in brush technique," Shao said.

In his brushwork, he piles up or overlaps colors.

Also, he utilizes the absorbent quality of paints to increase the visual sense of variegated colors and produce a strong artistic attraction.

His perfect use of materials can be seen in his huge oil painting Peony Garden in Spring, which is full of natural vitality and vigor. It is representative of his style in oils.

Sometimes Zhao uses a variety of paints in order to produce the ink-splash effect of traditional Chinese painting. In addition, he pays great attention to the human figure, displaying it in exaggerated, but not distorted ways. His coloring is heavy, rich, strong and vigorous.

"He has devoted great effort to improving his ability to paint realistically, to shake off the influences of various trends, and sticks to the basic language he has chosen," says Yang Yuepu, an art critic who is also a painter.

Zhao has created a lot of human figure, landscape and still life paintings.

Zhao was born in 1937 and graduated from the oil painting department of Beijing Acadmey of Arts in 1962.

From 1970 to 1998, he was dean and professor of the Fine Arts Department of Beijing Education Institute. A lot of his students teach arts in primary and middle schools.

He has received guidance from many famous painters, including Wu Guanzhong, A Lao, Wei Tianlin and many others.

He is now the deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Society of Education on Fine Arts and executive vice-chairman of the board of directors of the Beijing Society of Education on Fine Arts.

The show will run through June 20.

(China Daily June 11, 2004)