Zhan Jianjun counts among the famous contemporary oil painters of the representional genre, partly inspired by western techniques and artists. He taught oil painting at the Central Academy of Arts and today, he is famous for having developed a certain 'chineseness' of oil painting during the 1970s and 80s.

After the cultural revolution, the artists trained and working at the Chinese art academies restarted painting in a manner closely modeled on Soviet academic style and realist genre just to find their own forms in the mid to late 1980s when different kinds of western books became available in addition to their academic training.

Zhan translated the Soviet style and techniques he had studied thorou...