THE Dafen Oil Painting Village in Longgang District, a subvenue of the 19th China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair (ICIF), has been opened to the public with a wide variety of art exhibitions and other activities.

As ICIF’s first subvenue organizer, the oil painting village has participated in the cultural event for 19 consecutive years since 2004.

With the Dafen Art Museum as the main venue of the Dafen Oil Painting Village subvenue, a total of 13 creation, exhibition and trading activities have been organized in a bid to propel the development of Dafen’s oil painting industry.

A collection of 90 representative works by over 40 domestic oil painting masters is on display in an exhibition featuring contemporary Chinese landscape oil paintings.

The exhibition not only showcases the new achievements and development of Chinese oil painting in recent years, but also provides a platform for communication and research among artists across the country, further enhancing the exchange between painters on the mainland and those from Hong Kong and Macao.

Other art exhibitions to satiate art enthusiasts’ appetites include an exhibition of selected national and provincial artworks, an exhibition that gathers 10 influential galleries in the Dafen Oil Painting Village, an AI visual art exhibition, Chinese artist Fu Yibing’s contemporary imagery oil painting exhibition and a Russian oil painting exhibition.

The ICIF subvenue has also organized an art lecture and set up an interactive installation for visitors.

Thirty years ago, Dafen Village was just a Hakka village covering an area of only 0.4 square kilometers. Dubbed as the No. 1 oil painting village in China, the village houses over 1,800 art studios and gathers some 8,000 painters nowadays.

Data showed that for a period of time, China produced 70% of oil paintings in the European and American markets, 80% of which came from Dafen Village.

In an interview with Shenzhen Evening News, a painter at the village said that the village was almost like an “oil painting assembly line” in the 1990s, and the paintings were churned out and sold in bulk.

In about 2010, the oil painting village began to reinvent itself as a creative hub. At present, the village has gathered around 400 artists who create original works, including 40 members of the China Artists Association and 92 members of provincial artists associations.

The village has also become a popular destination for citizens and tourists to experience the fun of painting.

(Zhang Yu)