Man of Landscape: Chuang Che

Odile Chen / Ravenel Quarterly No. 49 / 2024-11-05

Chung Che was photographed at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum retrospective in 2015. (credit by 魏品禾)

The 90-year-old Chinese-American artist Chuang Che has been invited to hold a special exhibition titled "Vivacity Overflowing – Chuang Che at 90" at the Asia University Museum of Modern Art, starting on October 26, 2024, and running until April 6, 2025. The museum has borrowed over 100 works from the United States, France, Shanghai, Singapore, and Taiwan, covering pieces from the early 1960s to more recent works from after the millennium, offering collectors a visual feast.

Chuang Che's retrospective exhibitions at major museums have occurred approximately every decade. In 2015, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum held an "Effusive Vitality" exhibition to celebrate his 80th birthday, following an earlier solo exhibition in 1992 that reviewed 35 years of his artistic career. His work is highly esteemed, with collections held by prestigious institutions and private collectors both domestically and internationally.

In May 2021, the Centre Pompidou in Paris announced the acquisition of two of Chuang Che's paintings. One is a vertical composition from 1964, showcasing his early use of Eastern ink- like washes and collage techniques. The second, a large horizontally composed abstract painting from 1981, is distinguished by its light-green palette, broad white spaces, and a seamless blend of Eastern and Western elements. This acquisition was made possible through the efforts of Li-Li Lien, then Director of the Taiwan Cultural Center in Paris, and art dealer Sabine Vazieux. Catherine David, senior curator at the Centre Pompidou and artistic director of the 1997 Documenta exhibition in Germany, selected the works, which were later donated by Chuang himself. These additions filled a crucial gap in the museum's collection of Chinese abstract painters, which also includes works by fellow Fifth Moon Group artist Fong Chung-Ray (born 1934).

Chuang's art is deeply influenced by the landscape traditions of the Northern Song dynasty, and he holds great admiration for Ming and Qing masters such as Bada Shanren, Shitao, Chen Hongshou, and Xu Wei. His work embodies a refined, transcendent aesthetic. Although Chuang came slightly after renowned artists like Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh-Chun, he developed his artistic framework in Taiwan, while actively engaging in international art exchanges. His profound understanding of Western avant-garde movements, combined with his connections to the Fifth Moon Group and the Ton-fan Group, enriched his vision and allowed him to merge diverse cultural elements in his work.

With a rich artistic heritage, Chuang began copying classical Chinese landscape and figure paintings at the age of ten. Reflecting on his long and eventful life, it's clear why his work exudes such elegance, balance, and harmony. His ability to draw from both Eastern and Western traditions has made him a pivotal figure in modern abstract art.

Born into an Artistic Family: Appreciating the Beauty of Classical Landscapes

Chuang Che was born in Beijing in 1934. His father, Chuang Shang-Yen (1899–1980), and his mother, Shen Ruo-Hsia (1906–2006), had a profound influence on his upbringing. Chuang Shang-Yen graduated from Peking University's Department of Philosophy and studied archaeology in Japan. He was also an expert in ancient artifacts, an art historian, and a renowned calligrapher, known for his distinctive "slender gold" style of calligraphy. Chuang Che was the third son in the family. His eldest brother, Chuang Shen (1932–2000), became an art historian and founded the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Hong Kong. His second brother, Chuang Yin (1933–2022), became a famous writer and poet, known by the pen name Sang Yu. His younger brother, Chuang Ling (born in 1938), became a well-known photographer. Their father practiced calligraphy diligently every day, and the children would grind ink and prepare paper while observing him. Their father's love for writing cursive script, with its rhythmic brushstrokes, variations in character size, and balance of spatial composition, provided fundamental visual training that became deeply ingrained in the artistic DNA of the Chuang brothers.

From a young age, Chuang Che was immersed in a scholarly environment. At the time of his birth, his father was head of the First Section of the Antiquities Department at the Palace Museum in Beiping (Beijing). Due to political changes on the mainland, the museum began preparations to move its treasures southward. In 1935, 80 iron boxes filled with valuable ancient artifacts and paintings were selected for exhibition in London, with Chuang Shang-Yen appointed as the Chinese secretary responsible for escorting them. After the outbreak of the Sino- Japanese War in 1937, the exhibited artifacts, along with other treasures from the Palace Museum, were hidden to protect them from harm. Chuang Shang-Yen supervised this effort. With labor shortages during the war, the Chuang family often helped guard these treasures. In the humid southern climate, boxed paintings and calligraphy had to be aired to prevent damage from dampness. As children, Chuang Che and his brothers assisted in these tasks, while their father explained the history behind famous artworks. Over the years, the family moved from Beijing to Shanghai, Nanjing, Hankou, Changsha, Guilin, Guiyang, Chongqing, and back to Nanjing, enduring an arduous journey as they accompanied the Palace Museum's treasures.

While working for the Palace Museum in southern China, Chuang Shang-Yen's colleagues Liu Eshi (1914–1952) and Huang Yi (real name Huang Juxiang, 1909–1954) became Chuang Che's first painting mentors. Liu Eshi, a graduate of the Beiping Art School, had training in Western painting and excelled at copying ancient works, while Huang Yi, a folk figure painting expert, used non-traditional ink techniques to outline figures. These mentors helped shape Chuang's early artistic development. As a child, he also traveled with his father to various parts of China, admiring its famous landscapes and absorbing the essence of classical painting culture. The family often played a bedtime game called "Masterpiece Relay," where they would name the dynasties, artists, and titles of renowned paintings—a tradition that deeply ingrained classical Chinese art in Chuang Che's memory.

After World War II, in 1946, Chuang Che attended Chaotian Temple Elementary School and the Municipal First Middle School in Nanjing. On one occasion, he was caught drawing a lifelike portrait of his teacher in class instead of paying attention. Impressed by his talent, the teacher chose to keep the drawing rather than punish him. Word of Chuang Che's artistic abilities quickly spread throughout the school.

In 1948, Chuang Che's father escorted the Palace Museum's treasures across the sea to Taiwan, where they were initially stored at the Taichung Sugar Factory, then in Beigou, Wufeng, and later at Waishuangxi, Taipei. Chuang Shang-Yen's role evolved from a clerk assisting with Qing palace artifacts to curator, department head, and eventually vice director of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Chuang Che arrived in Taiwan at the age of 15, after having lived through the upheavals of war and constant relocation. The extraordinary experiences of traveling across China and protecting national treasures profoundly influenced the Chuang family, shaping the lives of each brother, who went on to make significant contributions in their respective fields of art and literature.

Moving to Taiwan and Studying Western Painting

Chuang Che and his two older brothers attended Provincial Taichung Second High School, commuting by the Taiwan Sugar Corporation's Nantou branch railway from Wufeng to Taichung. In their free time, they often visited the homes of their father's colleagues, Liu Eshi and Huang Yi, near the station, where they observed them painting for leisure. Before his high school graduation exams, Chuang received foundational sketching guidance from Wang Er-chang, an art teacher at Provincial First High School and a graduate of the Beiping Art School. In 1954, Chuang was accepted into the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), excelling in his art subjects. It was during his university years that Chuang solidified his ambition to pursue a life in creative work. He had a passion for sketching from life, often returning home during winter and summer breaks to paint family portraits and venture into the countryside to capture nature in his drawings. He once remarked that the most valuable lesson from his time at NTNU was mastering charcoal sketching, as it revealed to him that modern Western painting was not about imitating nature but rather expressing it through different conceptual lenses.

As a young artist with a free spirit, Chuang sought to challenge outdated and rigid conventions. After graduating in 1958, he joined the avant-garde "Fifth Moon Group" and focused on abstract painting, exploring the interplay between Eastern and Western abstraction. In 1959, Chuang was invited to participate in the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil, marking the first of four appearances (also in 1963, 1965, and 1973).

In 1961, Chuang married Ma Hao, a fellow NTNU classmate and a year younger than him. Ma Hao, also a painter and member of the Fifth Moon Group, was known for her work in ceramics. Around 1962, Chuang began to delve into abstraction, employing fluid techniques to capture the essence of nature. His early works were marked by lyrical and free-flowing qualities, later evolving into a more intellectual and composed style. Eager to enrich his compositions, Chuang sought new forms of innovation.

Between 1962 and 1963, he adopted collage techniques, applying rice paper to his canvases and blending multiple media. He experimented with combining water and oil paints to create splashes and washes, while the wet, wrinkled paper generated dynamic textures through scraping and gouging. His bold surface disruptions reflected his quest to balance Eastern and Western aesthetics, aiming for a fusion that resonated with both traditions. His physical, gestural approach to painting drew comparisons to action painting. He infused significant amounts of Chinese calligraphy into his compositions, using bold black lines and expressive characters as integral elements. Incorporating both classical and modern poetry, Chuang's work became a blend of tradition and contemporary expression, manifesting an Eastern spirit within Western expressive techniques.

Chuang's art received academic recognition and high praise. In 1962, his painting Cloud Shadow, which combined calligraphic lines and splashed colors, won the gold medal at the Hong Kong International Salon of Painting. In 1965, he won first prize in the Taiwan region at the "Asian Representative Painter Tour Prize," organized by Cathay Pacific Airways. From 1963 to 1973, Chuang taught in the Department of Architecture at Tunghai University. On the other hand, Chuang was also a gifted writer, especially in art theory. In 1964, he published many articles, and his insightful perspectives were frequently seen in newspapers and magazines. Later, 24 of these essays were compiled into Essays on Modern Painting, published by Book's World Co., which was hailed as an important historical document of Taiwan's post-war modern art movement.

Chuang's first solo exhibition in 1965 at the National Taiwan Arts Hall in Taipei further cemented his status in Taiwan's art scene. During the conservative and relatively barren Taiwanese art landscape of the 1960s, Chuang, along with other avant-garde artists from the Fifth Moon Group and Ton-fan Group, championed innovation and artistic freedom. His refined and poetic vision of nature, coupled with his intellectual approach to abstract painting, positioned him as one of the pioneering figures in modern Taiwanese art.

Sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation for Studies in the United States

In 1966, Chuang Che was sponsored by the Rockefeller Asian Art Foundation to travel to the United States for a year of research on world art. That same year, he moved to New York, where he briefly assisted abstract expressionist sculptor Seymour Lipton (1903–1986), learning about materials and the creation of three-dimensional space. In 1968, Chuang spent six months in Paris, where he met artists such as Chu Teh-Chun, Zao Wou-Ki, Peng Wanchi, Hsiung Ping-Ming, and Hsia Yan, exchanging ideas and traveling through Europe before returning to Taiwan.

In 1972, Chuang left Taiwan for Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he converted a barn into an art studio in the countryside. Living in this pastoral setting for 14 years, he deeply reflected on his artistic practice, becoming dissatisfied with abstract painting and seeking to revive the spirit of Chinese landscape art. He also re-enrolled in art history at the University of Michigan. His works from the 1970s, often named after natural elements like rivers, trees, and clouds, featured large blank spaces and offered room for contemplation.

Between 1978 and 1982, Chuang proposed "the Third Way," a concept that neither followed Western traditions nor reverted to traditional Chinese methods. Instead, it sought a modern painting approach with a free, instinctive form of abstraction. As he wrote, "This path does not have a curriculum for you to follow step by step, but you can explore and delve into it based on your instincts and potential." Chuang defined his landscape paintings with the phrase, "Not Laozi, not Zhuangzi; my landscape painting has its own meaning." He aspired to refresh traditional art with a modern sensibility. Though reclusive in the American countryside, he remained connected to the world. In 1986, a Fulbright sponsorship brought him back to Taiwan, where he served as a visiting professor at the National Academy of Arts for a year and exhibited new works at the Lung Men Art Gallery. The following year, he co-exhibited with Wang Wuxie at the China Art Museum in Beijing, gaining wide respect in China's art community.

From 1987 to 1992, Chuang moved to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where he transformed an abandoned brewery into a studio. Inspired by the environmental decay around him, he collected driftwood and found materials, creating assemblage art in his "Hudson Series." His abstract works began to explore urban themes, reflecting contemporary human landscapes. He painted on industrial cotton paper and created mixed-media reliefs in the "Face Series" and "Figurative Series." These pieces expressed his enjoyment of simple, pure painting. After 1994, Chuang relocated to Manhattan, marking the start of his New York City period.

Returning to Original Intentions, Longing for the Spirit of Landscape

In the 1990s, Chuang Che explored the theme of faces, using mixed media to express forms freely. His brushstrokes evoked imagery unconstrained by tradition, with emotional expression at the core of the visual experience. The figures in his sketchbooks, often created through collage with newspapers and magazines before being repainted, symbolized Chuang's portrayal of the human experience. He aimed to connect real-life existence within his works, infusing them with deeper meaning.

After the millennium, Chuang drew inspiration from ancient art to create the "Rock & Cypress Series" and "Variation on Shesshu's Broken Ink Landscape," returning to his early pursuit of the spirit of Song dynasty landscape painting. To celebrate his second brother Chuang Yin's birthday, he wanted to present a figure of a Lohan (arhat). Referring to historical materials, he studied the Lohan paintings of Guo Xiu from the Five Dynasties and completed a scroll of 16 Lohan figures for his brother. So engrossed in his work, he subsequently created the larger "Sixteen Lohans Series," which was later acquired by the National Museum of History in Taipei.

In 2015, for a retrospective exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Chuang summarized his creative journey into four stages in his artistic statement: "The Beginning" (1958-1972), "Combining" (1972-1987), "Dialectic" (1987-1992), and "Synthesis" (1993-2014). Over the past two to three decades, he synthesized elements from earlier stages, further developing their characteristics while venturing into new explorations. This culminated in the "Man of Landscape" series, marking the final phase of his later years.

Chuang's creative style closely reflects his life journey. Living in diverse places allowed him to develop various painting styles. His roots in an artistic family and admiration for Chinese landscape painting, coupled with extensive travels, cultivated his tranquil, elegant, inclusive, and harmonious approach to abstract expressionism.

Chuang Che's Representing Galleries and Art Market Overview

Since the 1970s, Chuang Che has lived primarily in the United States, but he has maintained strong connections with Taiwan. He collaborated for many years with Lung Men Art Gallery, established in 1975. From 1978 until the gallery closed its Taipei location in 2002 and moved to Shanghai, Chuang held at least 11 solo exhibitions at Lung Men, averaging one every two years. The gallery played a significant role in promoting his art. Since 1989, he has also collaborated with the Hong Kong-based Alisan Fine Arts gallery, holding several solo exhibitions. The gallery's owner, Mrs. King, was dedicated to promoting overseas Chinese artists and organized three solo exhibitions for Chuang, helping him expand into the Hong Kong and international markets.

In 1998, Chuang spent a month lecturing at the Fourth Studio of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. In 1999, he was a visiting professor for a semester at the National Kaohsiung Normal University's Department of Fine Arts. These experiences highlighted his deep ties to his homeland. During his time in the U.S., he collaborated with local galleries, particularly Findlay Galleries in New York, which began representing him in 2006. By 2021, the gallery had hosted at least seven exhibitions of his work.

In Taiwan, the Asia Art Center has represented Chuang since 2005, organizing exhibitions and producing catalogues until 2020. The gallery has also promoted his work internationally. As mentioned, Galerie Vazieux in France, which facilitated the Pompidou Center's acquisition of his works, began collaborating with him in 2015 and hosted a solo exhibition in 2019. Galerie Vazieux remains his primary representative gallery, showcasing his work at major art fairs like Art Paris, Art Basel Hong Kong, and Taipei Dangdai, where his works have reportedly sold out, reflecting strong market demand.

Chuang's public collections include the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, National Museum of History in Taipei, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Guangdong Museum of Art, Shanghai Art Museum, and Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum in Beijing, among others, totaling at least 45 institutions. His collectors are spread worldwide, with the majority in the U.S., Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Due to gallery representation, Taiwan likely has the largest proportion of Chuang's collectors. According to Artprice, from 2000 to 2024, the total sales volume of Chuang's works at auction reached approximately US$9,772,480 (around NT$310 million, excluding commission). By auction region, Taiwan accounted for 42.89% of total sales, followed by Hong Kong at 38.80%, the U.S. at 12.63%, mainland China at 3.44%, Singapore at 1.33%, and other regions at 0.91%.

In the secondary market, Chuang's works have been featured in auctions since March 1992, when Sotheby's held its first auction in Taipei. A size 60 painting by Chuang was included in that sale. In April of the same year, a size 50 oil painting was auctioned at Sotheby's Hong Kong, with final hammer prices of NT$300,000 and HK$80,000, respectively. Since then, his works have regularly appeared in auctions in both Taiwan and Hong Kong. The highest auction price for his work to date was achieved in spring 2019 at Sotheby's Hong Kong, where his large-scale oil painting "Untitled" (three meters wide) sold for HK$1,370,500 (about US$173,158 or NT$5.65 million, including commission). The second highest was "Night Town" (two meters wide), which sold for NT$4.72 million (about US$155,238) at Ravenel's Spring Auction in Taipei in 2008. Over the past 30 years, the market for Chuang's works has remained relatively stable, with two notable peaks in activity: during the financial crisis in 2008 and after new representing galleries joined in 2019. Future prices remain promising.

Now, at the age of 90, Chuang Che's works have returned to Wufeng, where he lived for many years in Taiwan. They are being exhibited at the Asia University Museum of Modern Art, housed in a building designed by a renowned architect. This highly anticipated exhibition offers collectors from around the world a rare opportunity to appreciate the abstract compositions and expressive landscapes of this modern literati artist.