Chao Chung-Hsiang

CHAO CHUNG-HSIANG (China, 1910-1991).
"Landscape with figures".
Ink and watercolor on rice paper.
Signed and dedicated.
Measurements: 33 x 33 cm; 46,5 x 46,5 cm (frame).

In this drawing on rice paper, a woman pulls her donkey, which is reluctant to move forward, frightened by the strong wind that shakes everything, from the young woman's dress to the bare branches of fragile autumn trees. It is a painting by the Chinese artist Chao Chung-Hsiang, whose techniques and style were rooted in the Eastern tradition, but who also knew how to adapt Western elements, so that it was in the synthesis between the two that she managed to develop a very personal language. This is palpable in this delicate composition in which he uses ink and watercolor.

Chao Chung-Hsiang was born in Henan in 1910. After 1948, he traveled through Taiwan, Spain, Paris and other European cities, and settled in New York in 1958. He returned to China, to Hong Kong until 1989, and died in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1991. He succeeded in preserving the spirit of traditional Chinese ink painting and calligraphy, which he combined with the ideas of modern Western art. He developed a form of expression called "East meets West" and pursued the metaphysical conception of "not demanding form, but a similarity in spirit", and merged his works with the ideas of the I Ching. In the narrative of Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Yin-Yang and the Five Elements, he created a unique new realm of Chinese painting. His works have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Columbia University in New York, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Art Museum of China, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Zhejiang Museum of Art, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the M+ Museum of Visual Culture. Collections: Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. Norwalk Museum, Norwalk, CT, USA. New York University, New York, NY, USA. Queens Museum, New York, NY, USA. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA. Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, USA. Russell Sage College, Troy, NY, USA. University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA. Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY, USA. Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, USA.