Images of gloomy times

Pieces by Russian artists from a similar display, Victory: 1945-2015!.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

It also features postwar works like the painting trilogy, Yellow River Cantana (2009). Zhan Jianjun and Ye Nan coproduced three epic scenes in which exiled people brace for resistance against Japanese aggression.

The two shows complement each other, Zhang believes.

The 76 pieces in Victory: 1945-2015! unveil an equally fierce war panorama on the European theater's eastern front.

"Time seems frozen in these works. They're heart-stopping," Zhang says.

Many pieces center on the separations of families as soldiers left for battlefields－often never to return.

One from the Moscow-based State Russian Museum portrays a couple parting in the gloom of dusk.

"The slumping shoulders don't show a courageous, spirited solider," Zhang explains.

"Apparently, he's reluctant to leave his wife. Even though the painting expresses a man's responsibility to save his country from disaster, it approaches the subject with the warmth of humanity."

Zhang says Russian counterparts suggested a space displaying huge portraits and sculptures of mothers during wartime. But because of space constraints, NAMOC instead opted to display a marble miniature of the statue, The Motherland Calls.