Che Chuang

Che Chuang is a Chinese artist born in Beijing in 1934. He is the son of a renowned calligrapher who is also deputy director of the National Palace Museum. In 1948, when moving the works from the Beijing National Palace to Taipei, Chuang Che followed his family to Taiwan. From 1954, he trained in painting at the Fine Arts Department of the National Normal University in Taiwan. In 1958, he joined the “Fifth Moon Group”, of which he was one of the main players. In 1966, the Rockefeller Foundation offered him the opportunity to make his first trip to the United States. He then visited Europe, notably France and Spain, where he met Zao Wou Ki, Chu Teh-Chun and Antoni Tapiès. These meetings confirm him in his desire to free himself from a tradition in order to better pay him homage. From 1973, he moved to the USA and isolated himself on a farm in Michigan. Over the years, he builds an abstract work, an expression of his deep relationship with nature. He explores the possibilities and limits of different materials: ink, acrylic and oil. The artist plays with the transparency or opacity of these materials to convey the impression of the strength of the elements. The Taipei Fine Arts Museum devoted a major retrospective to him in 2015. Master of abstract landscape on canvas, poet and philosopher, the spirituality of his works is in line with the great traditional Chinese artists. Chuang Che is today considered a pioneer in the evolution of Chinese painting towards abstraction.