Visual Arts

“Lingnan” is situated south of the great Nanling Mountains that geographically separate it from the region of Jiangnan, while leafing through the history of art brings up the term “Lingnan” as a cultural footnote marking the development of art in southern China. Over the past 100 years or so, the region of Guangdong has become the cradle of modern Chinese painting. From its origins, Guangdong painting quickly flourished and established itself in Chinese art history as a new offshoot branching out from the traditional mainstream of its northern counterparts.

This exhibition showcases over 80 works from Guangdong dating from the late Ming dynasty to the 20th century that present the historical and artistic development of painting in the Lingnan region. Paying particular attention to showing how artists from Guangdong paved the way towards the modernisation of Chinese painting by adopting both traditional and modern ideas and integrating local and foreign elements during the revolutionary era in China, the exhibition highlights the regional styles of Guangdong painting and the influence it exerted on Hong Kong’s early painting movements.