Republican period of chinese art

A Chinese period of history which began in 1912. Although the Republic of China was driven from what is now called China (People's Republic of China) in 1949 by Communist revolutionaries led by Mao Tsetung, it has continued to flourish on the island of Taiwan (Formosa), as an independent country, also called Nationalist China. When General Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975) resigned as president of Nationalist China in January 1949 and fled to Taiwan that May, he took with him a national art collection that was kept in crates for years as he and his followers clung to the ever-diminishing hope that they would someday take it back to Beijing. This collection became the core of what is today the National Palace Museum.