By Jin Lu

Two original works by Paul Cézanne have gone on display in Ningbo for the first time, anchoring a new exhibition at the Ningbo Art Museum that explores the modernity of Chinese painting through cross-cultural dialogue.

Titled "Tribute to Cézanne: The Modernity of Chinese Paintings", the exhibition opened on Feb 12 and features nearly 100 works, including Cézanne's early oils from the 1860s — Landscape at Midday (c. 1865) and Landscape (c. 1866). Part of the museum's collection, they reveal the artist's early exploration of color, texture and structure, which later earned him recognition as a pioneer of modern painting.

Curated by Xia Kejun, a professor at Renmin University of China, the exhibition centers on the idea of the "unfinished Cézanne". Xia explains that Cézanne's late experiments—blending the transparency of watercolor with the solidity of oil—remain unresolved, inviting reinterpretation. Seventeen contemporary Chinese artists engaged with this concept using traditional ink painting, exploring new directions for a distinctly Chinese approach to modernity in art.

The exhibition creates a fascinating dialogue between the past and the present, highlighting both the museum's collection and the ongoing evolution of Chinese artistic expression. It runs through March 8 and was free to the public during the Chinese New Year holiday.