Italian painter's brush with New China came five decades ago

Soon after his return from a thought-provoking trip to China in 1956, Italian artist Aligi Sassu (1912-2000) began several large-scale oil paintings, which included The New China that he finished three years later.

In the work, Sassu depicted a group of young pioneers, one holding up a red flag, who moved forward cheerfully against the backdrop of a red-bricked ancient architecture and bright orange sky.

The painting sums up Sassu's impressions of his first visit to China, or as he wrote to his mother three days after his arrival in Beijing, " this is an ancient and a new world that's walking forward very fast, working with a positive attitude and a truly new and touching spirit".