HSIAO CHIN (Shanghai, 1935).
"Ux-107", 1960.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner; signed, titled and dated on the back.
Measurements: 69 x 99 cm; 71 x 101 cm. (frame).
In the early 1960s, Hsiao Chin's artistic and life career was at a turning point. Throughout the decade, his painting would gradually lose texture and matter (moving away from the influence of European Informalism) and move towards an exploration closer to the heritage of Minimalism, Constructivism and Op Art. The painting shown here is situated at the hinge between these two quests. Although it is a material work, on a base of improvised gesture a studied composition of full and empty spaces unfolds through which the artist rehearses a singular visualisation of Zen philosophy. The millenary Orient and the Western avant-garde have been two reins on which the Chinese artist has pulled to advance along a unique path that he himself has been clearing freely.
Hsiao Chin is a visual artist known for his numerous works and exhibitions on contemporary art, and for being the founder of the Chinese Abstract Art Organisation in Taipei. Born in Shanghai in January 1935, Hsiao Chin was influenced by his father, Hsiao You-mei, a well-known contemporary musician who founded the first music school in China, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, in 1927. After the death of his father Chin had to go to live with his uncles and aunts in Taiwan; there he started his career as an artist at Taipei's Chengkung Middle School, today's National Taipei University of Education, a contemporary art school that helped him to integrate and interact with other contemporary artists, such as Ho Kan, Li Yuan-chia, Wu Haou and others, with whom he founded, together with Ho Kan, one of the first abstract art movements in China, the Top-Fan Art Group.
In July 1956, Hsiao Chin decided to undertake a trip to Europe where he would continue his training as an artist; his first stop of many was Spain, where he participated in the "Jazz Salon Exhibition" in Barcelona. Later he decided to move around Italy and France until he arrived in the United States, where he met artists such as Mark Rothko and Mark Tobey, who taught him an art that broke with everything he had previously known; his work underwent a great evolution together with his person thanks to the experiences he had lived through during these years. His paintings are a representation of the idealism of Neo-Taoism; an abstract and constructivist representation that does not only follow a colourist and western technique but includes the classical Chinese typographic style, in order to create a Zen atmosphere and to remember the origins of his cultural roots. Many of his works are exhibited in major European contemporary art galleries, in Spain, specifically in Barcelona, he has works exhibited in the "Mataró Fine Arts Museum" and in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, the "MACBA". In 1961, during his stay in Italy, Milan, he founded "Punto Art Movement" where he had numerous exhibitions in galleries such as "Galleria Salone Annunciata", Milan, "Galerie Internationale d'Art Contemporain", Paris and "Gignals Gallery", London. We can also find part of his work in New York, where in 1967 he exhibited part of his work in "Rose Fried Gallery" together with Mark Rothko. Currently most of his artworks are in the National Museum of History in Taipei, Taiwan, where he has a permanent exhibition of his work.