ten years of hong kong painting

Fleeing China in the late 1940s and early 1950s,
numerous traditional Chinese painters decided to settle in
Hong Kong and to pass their skills and knowledge on to
their students. Among the early settlers are Chao Shaoan,
Yang Shen-sum —- who are painters of the Lingnan
School— and Fang Zhaoling. They are artists who regard
themselves primarily as Chinese painters. To them, the
traditional values must be retained, and the use of ink and
brush must be mastered before all else. Theirs is a
tradition handed down through the ages by artists who
have laboriously copied the old masters' work and could
regurgitate the various styles of past dynasties. Very
often, a painter would have to go through a long period of
apprenticeship before being allowed to establish his or
her identifiable look. Although this process of copying
may seem unnecessary in an age of satellite and
television, it, nevertheless, has not deterred China's great
painters from attempting the quintessential statements.
Indeed, Chinese painting does not have to be westernised
in order for it to remain vital and original. And Fang
Zhaoling illustrates that point by keeping an inquisitive
mind and by adopting modern day subject matter in her
painting. King Chia-lun, Cheng Ming and Poon Chun-wah
belong to the second generation of painters who continue
the traditional line of Chinese painting in Hong Kong.
With the arrival of Lui Shou-kwan (1919-1975) in Hong
Kong in 1948, an important page in the evolution of local
painting was turned. Lui, with his Chan (Zen) paintings
which fused an Abstract Expressionist approach with the
spirit of Chinese philosophic thinking, was one of the
crucial figures in the history of Hong Kong painting. The
In-Tao Art Association and the One Art Group were
formed in the sixties under his guidance to carry on this
East/West fusion. Some group members, Wucius Wong,
Irene Chou and Chui Tze-hung, who were his students,
were to become active painters in the subsequent
decades. Together with Liu Kuo-sung who originally came
from Taiwan, they pioneered a new sensibility which has
quickly become the dominant force in Hong Kong
painting. Like Lui Shou-kwan, they use the Chinese
medium of ink, brush and paper (Shui Mo) while mixing
element of design, Surrealism and various western
techniques in their art. Their preferred subject matter is
still the landscape. Yet the mountains and streams, long
the staple themes of Chinese painting, might be formed
by spraying and splashing ink or by crinkling the paper
before applying colours. Gone are the roaming wise men