The market economy reform, which began in China in the 1990s, changed people’s lifestyle, brought them freedom and diversity. It inevitably gave an impetus to the development of painting in the country of the new era. Thematic paintings were wide-spread in visual arts, which contributed to renewal of painting. Artists were greatly attracted by the Tibetan regions at the source of the Yellow River and tried to convey the spirit, rituals, and national costumes of its inhabitants. They depicted the sacred beauty of the plateau on their canvas, spread the values typical for the area at the source of the Yellow River throughout the country showing the beauty of the Tibetan people to the whole world.

The article is devoted to the creative works of artists who have created pictures of life of the people living along the Yellow (Huang He) River in all nine regions of China. The Huang He River, as the main artery of the country, has long been the subject of study by historians, writers and painters. However, contemporary artists who dedicated their works to the river have not been researched. This work examines the collective image of the Huang He River in the works of Chinese artists from the 1980s to the present day in order to get acquainted with its peculiarities. The methodological basis for the study of contemporary art is the historical and cultural and socio-cultural approaches. The methods of historical-comparative and sociological analysis of art, biographical and iconographic analysis, semiotics and hermeneutics methods are used. For the first time the features of oil painting in different regions along the Huang He River are presented: the geomorphological characteristics, national characters and folk customs in the river basin, and the cultural protection function of painting. The names of a number of Chinese artists have been introduced into Russian art history, and the panorama of the development of painting in the works of Chinese masters painting on the Huang He River has been shown. The works of these artists are correlated with the traditional art and religious ideas of the people living along the Huang He River: the role of created paintings in preserving the cultural code of the inhabitants through the portrayal of national costume, folk and religious holidays is traced. The results can serve as a basis for historical and comparative studies of the artworks of Chinese masters and become the basis for courses on the history of Chinese art.

The article examines the historical process of the development of the features of the embodiment of the Yellow River motif, which is quite relevant in modern Chinese art, made in the technique of oil painting. Chinese artists turned to the classical world heritage of painting only at the end of the nineteenth century. In a relatively short period of time, Chinese masters not only perfectly mastered the realistic principles of oil painting, but also were able to adapt this type of artistic creativity to their culture by searching for a national idea of the work. This article is devoted to the analysis of the image and the symbolic meaning of the Yellow River in Chinese oil painting. The study concluded that the character and worldview of the Chinese people originated in the valley of the Yellow River, so the image of this river is inextricably linked in the minds of every citizen of the country with the origins of the nation. Moreover, the artistic expression of the spiritual values of the Chinese people cannot be conceived without the image of the Yellow River. In the modern era, many oil artists express the image of the Yellow River in different ways, conveying their understanding and perception of the national spirit through pictorial means. In this regard, it is of interest to study the variations of the image of the river in oil painting from the point of view of its symbolic meaning and artistic expressiveness. This study identifies and examines, by the example of outstanding works of oil painting in China of the late XX and early XXI centuries, the features of the pictorial reading of the image in the plot compositions.