The Singer by Iwan Lubennikow [Photo provided to China Daily]

The couple parted with 117 artworks in their collection to make one of the most important donations the National Museum of China has received in its history. Featured artists include cultural icons from Europe and the United States such as Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter and Andy Warhol.

When a grand exhibition to show the collection was unveiled at the museum in November 1996, only Irene Ludwig attended the opening ceremony. Her husband had died that July, two months after initiating a donation agreement with the museum in Beijing.

Yang Lizhou, then-deputy director of the museum, recalls telling Peter Ludwig that Chinese people would remember him and his wife for their generosity.

Over the years, the museum has exhibited the donated works a few times and has shown them on tours of cities such as Chengdu, Wuhan and Harbin. More Chinese have gotten to understand Western art from the decades following 1970.

The ongoing exhibition displays Picasso's Busts of Man and Woman by A Vase, a painting the Spanish master produced three years before his death in 1973. It shows people's fascination with love and also a fear of the burden it brings.