Exhibition highlights the work of artist who realized the significance of the Mogao Caves, Fang Aiqing reports in Hangzhou.

Gazing at the paintings of Chang Shuhong (1904-94), founding director of the Dunhuang Academy, people can still feel the fundamental draw of the Mogao Caves that brought him back from France in the 1930s, leaving behind a prospect of an emerging classical oil painter.

The following five decades saw him immerse in the charm of the treasure trove of Buddhist murals and painted sculptures as a wholehearted protector of the grottoes in the Gobi Desert of Northwest China.

His later works, therefore, were largely influenced by murals in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, Gansu province — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — and a more down-to-earth, local artistic expression of China popular at that time, says Zhang Yiqing, research librarian at the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou, Chang's hometown.

In commemoration of the 120th anniversary of Chang's birth, some of his oil paintings, watercolors and sketches are on show at the museum through to Sunday.