Resonance from the heart

Moldovan artist Tudor Zbarnea has been exploring the history, tradition, culture and national character of his homeland, drawing inspiration from mythology and folk tales to illustrate aspects of humanity.

Echoes of Essence, an exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing until Dec 27, is a display of his paintings and demonstrates his subtle treatment of color, presenting a contrast between fullness and emptiness, light and shadow. Zbarnea uses rough strokes to create geometric patterns, lending them strength and grandeur.

Zbarnea is general director of the National Art Museum of Moldova, and donated two of the paintings from the show to the museum at the opening.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays. 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6400-1476.

Maritime bounty

Zhoushan, an island city in Zhejiang province, has good harbors, excellent fishing, and a rich history of Buddhist culture. The newly opened Zhoushan Art Museum adds to the city's cultural landscape, and pays tribute to its maritime history and spirit of embracing the challenge of life on the waves.

The building was designed by Wang Shu, a Pritzker Architecture Prize winning architect and professor at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Curated by UCCA Lab, the opening exhibition, Sailing Home, teams together 16 Chinese and foreign artists whose work reflects maritime history and culture. It also discusses the changing perceptions of nature and views of the world, as cultures have journeyed across the watery expanses, finding profitable opportunities and confronting risk. The exhibition runs through to Aug 24 next year.

9 am-4:30 pm, closed on Mondays. 615 Hongshan Road, Putuo district, Zhoushan, Zhejiang province.

Hand-held theater

In Shanghai, the period between 1950s and '70s saw a boom in the creation of lianhuanhua ("a series of pictures") and xiaorenshu ("little people's books"), Chinese comic books. The palm-size picture books gained popularity among readers of varied age and background as they were easy to carry around, readable, and vividly rendered, and were not only a form of entertainment but also educational.

Shanghai native He Youzhi (1922-2016) was a leading lianhuanhua artist of the time. He turned his personal experience and observations of everyday life into dramas on paper. His work preserves the folk customs and culture of Shanghai, and his painterly retellings of classic Chinese literature have become classics in their own right that have left a deep impression in the memories of his readers.

Story Telling Through Brushwork, an exhibition until Feb 16 at the Suzhou Museum in Jiangsu province, is a display of dozens of comics from the collection of Beijing Fine Art Academy. The latter has over 700 of He's comics that have been donated by the artist himself, his family and friends over the years.

9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays.204 Dongbei Jie, Suzhou, Jiangsu province. 0512-6757-5666.