The second China Thangka Art Festival will be held from September 28th to October 17th in Lhasa, capital city of SW China's Tibet Autonomous Region.There will be a Thangka exhibition, Thangka trade show, and high-end Thangka forums, amongst other activities. The festival will also showcase hundreds of pieces of traditional Thangka artwork.

More than 2,000 pieces of Thangka artwork from home and abroad

Photo shows one piece of exhibit [Photo/Arton.Net]

The festival received more than 2,000 pieces of artwork from various organizations and personal recommendations from home and abroad, including Thangka artists, famous artists, successors, collectors, Thangka art institutes and temples. The panel of experts from the organizing committee reviewed the works and finally chose 200 of the finest works to be displayed in the exhibition.

"These works reflect the highest level of Tibetan Thangka artwork," said Tashi Dorje, vice chairman of the Association for the Promotion of Cultural Development in Tibet and Director of the China Thangka Art Festival Committee.

"60% of the works are by local Thangka artists", Tashi said. Qamdo City collected works and recommended more than 100 works out of several hundred to the organizing committee. An 84-year-old local named Karma rode his motorbike for three hours to deliver his works. Having heard the old man’s story, the organizing committee was moved by his enthusiasm and invited him to Lhasa to attend the Art Festival.

Tashi said that the China Thangka Arts Festival exhibition is currently the platform for Thangka artwork with the highest participation, highest level and most definitive display in China and abroad. The panel of experts from the organizing committee will choose a gold, silver, bronze and other prizes from the selected works, reflecting the value of the genuine high-end Thangka work and the Thangka artists.
 
11 showrooms dedicated to Thangka art and a special Thangka master hall

The festival’s Thangka exhibition not only shows the various Tibetan genres of Thangka art, but also Thangka artwork from the Tibetan inhabited areas of Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu provinces. "The Lhasa hall has the most works with a total of 57; the Qamdo hall has 54 and Qinghai hall has 37; the Shigatse hall only has 21, but was the area with the highest selection rate," said Tashi.

The Thangka exhibition has a total of 11 exhibition halls and one special Thangka master hall, where audiences can see the masterpieces of nine national intangible heritage successors and arts and crafts masters from Tibet and other provinces.

In addition, there will be 16 collectibles on display, which play an important part in the Thangka exhibition. “The overall quality of this year’s collectibles surpasses last year’s,” added Tashi. There will also be a Nepal exhibition hall showcasing eleven of Nepal’s famous Thangka artists’ works.