Modern artist Liu Wenxi is often hailed as “the Chinese painter whose work has been viewed the most,” because a portrait he painted of Chairman Mao Zedong is featured on the banknotes of the fifth edition of the national currency. , the renminbi, which has been in circulation since 1999.

In addition to this, Liu is remembered as “a people’s artist” because he created a body of work that provides a vivid representation of the grassroots Chinese, especially the farmers of the northern part of the province. Shaanxi.

Liu developed an emotional bond with Shaanxi and the people who lived there during a trip in 1957, during which he was to find inspiration for a graduation thesis. He was then a student at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, now the Chinese Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.

After graduating the following year, Liu became a teacher at the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in Xi’an, Shaanxi. Over the next six decades, until his death, he lived, worked and traveled extensively in the province. He left an artistic legacy illustrating various aspects of the social life of local farmers, praising their hard work and unyielding spirit in the face of life’s hardships.

Art for people, an exhibition currently being held at the National Museum of China in Beijing and running until early December, pays homage to Liu’s lifelong service to grassroots people. More than 200 ink and water paintings, drawings and sketches that depict his roughly 60 journeys to the many villages nestled in the remote mountains of Shaanxi’s Loess Plateau are on display.

Liu once said, “Shanbei (northern Shaanxi) is in my blood. The land, the landscapes, its history and its cultures continue to provide me with abundant nourishment and to enrich the reserve of my source of life.