Francisco Hung

FRANCISCO HUNG (Venezuela, 1937-2001).
Untitled, 1990.
Acrylic on canvas.
With tear in the lower right corner.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements. 65 x 80 cm; 81 x 98 cm (frame).
Francisco Hung was a painter of diverse roots, son of a Chinese father and Venezuelan mother. He arrived in Venezuela in 1950 and settled in Maracaibo, his mother's hometown. In 1956 he began his artistic training at the Julio Arraga School of Plastic Arts in Maracaibo and held his first individual exhibition at the Mare Mare Gallery in Caracas. Two years later, in 1958, she participated in the V Salón D'Empaire and won the Stimulus Award. Thanks to this recognition, the Municipal Council of Maracaibo granted him a scholarship to continue his artistic training in France. That same year he traveled to Paris and entered the Superior School of Fine Arts.
In 1962, he participated in the VIII Salon D'Empaire and won the second prize. By then, his work already reflected the influence of European abstract expressionism, with a notable interest in calligraphic and matter painting, similar to the style of artists such as George Mathieu and Roberto Matta. Hung returned to Venezuela in 1963, settling permanently in Maracaibo. There he contributed to the creation of the artistic group 40 Grados a la Sombra and maintained a prominent presence in art salons. He was selected to participate in the traveling exhibition "22 Venezuelan painters of today", which toured Santiago de Chile, Montevideo and Lima. In 1964 he received three of the most important awards at the Young Artists Salon of the Museum of Fine Arts (MBA).
In 1965 he won the National Painting Prize at the XXVI Official Salon with his work Materia Flotante (Floating Matter). Two years later, in 1967, he exhibited with Francisco Bellorin and Carlos Contramaestre at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota. Between 1967 and 1968, he collaborated with a team of artists and technicians in the audiovisual show Imagen de Caracas, created to celebrate the quadricentennial of the Venezuelan capital. In 1969, he participated in the university renovation movement, painting murals with students and other artists in squares and neighborhoods of Maracaibo; however, these works were later erased. He also painted murals in the Faculty of Economics of the University of Zulia (LUZ). Throughout his career, Francisco Hung's painting has maintained a coherent style, evolving through different stages without losing its distinctive character. In 1977 he exhibited a series of self-portraits and, in 1991, he presented another collection of self-portraits and portraits of his family, showing a new dimension of his art.