ABSTRACT
Although China’s mainstream artistic style after 1949 was realism, the exploration of modernism was still extended in the field of fine arts, especially reflected in the appearance and development of decorative painting. Zhang Ding, Zhang Guangyu and Pang Xunqin proposed a new concept of “decorative painting” in the 1950s, and established the Department of Decorative Painting at The Central Academy of Arts and Design, which not only opened up a relatively independent space for the exploration of the pure form in painting, but also integrated aspects of modernism into teaching. In the name of “decoration,” Zhang and his students manifested another form of art that was distinctive from the mainstream realism of the 1950s and 1960s, and which finally, and very publicly, culminated in the 1979 Beijing Airport mural.
