China Art Curretn: A Virtual Museum

With the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, China recognized its social and cultural construction along Soviet lines-a system that remained in force until the late 1970s, when China's leaders called for major reforms. During the early years of the People's Republic, tensions between intellectuals and China's new government, which had existed since the earliest days of the Chinese Communists movement, reached new heights. The cultural characteristics of this period were the constant ideological campaigns and reforms that became extreme during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976. Artists who were active in the early 1950s voluntarily made their art works more compatible with the socialist thinking of the time; but the rapidly changing political demands that were placed on these artists forced them either to push for further use of art works in propagandizing social issues, or to discontinue working as artists. This situation only worsened in the final years of the 1950s, as millions of intellectuals and thousands of artists were imprisoned or exiled to remote areas as a result of tensions between them and the government.
It was during this period that China's version of socialist and communist art form and style was established.