In 1973, the novice painter Zhang Wei met Yang Yushu while painting from life in a Beijing park. Since then, he often went to the suburbs of Beijing with artists such as Zhao Wenliang and Yang Yushu to sketch after work, forming a relationship with the two teachers as well as friends. They moved away from the city, avoiding the hustle and bustle of politics, and created their works in generous and tolerant mountains, forests and lakes. In the age of extremes, they completely integrated their personal state of mind and proposition into the form and content of their paintings, discovering an inner release that gives these works an inner tension. Artistic creation and interaction became a spiritual harbor for them to preserve their individuality and liberty in an abnormal social environment, and they thus formed a flexible group, later called The No Name Group. After half a century later, Zhang Wei was invited by the Zhao Wenliang & Yang Yushu Art Center to approach the works of Zhao and Yang again, in order to retrace to the moments of creativity that they shared.

Zhao’s and Yang’s works were absorbed in around landscapes, objects, and friends, mostly using general but representational brushstrokes to express the images they perceived.  Browsing their works, Zhang has focused on the ones that, in his opinion, have received less attention but closely relate to his own artistic interests, paying particular attention to formal characteristics such as color, brushstrokes, and alterations in the lines. In this exhibition, Zhang has selected seventeen works, including fourteen by Zhao and three by Yang.