Chao Chung-hsiang  (1910 Henan China-1991Taiwan)

One of the most well known overseas Chinese artist graduated from National Institute of Art, Hangzhou where he studied under the great master Lin Fengmian. In 1948, he immigrated to Taiwan and in 1956 won a fellowship to study in Spain. Two years later he settled in New York, where he remained most his life. There he worked conscientiously to achieve a synthesis of East and West and to bring ink painting into the main stream of international art.

Throughout his life, he remained an introverted Chinese scholar-painter. His works became well known worldwide after he passed away in 1991.

Chao's art was between two cultures: China was the basis of his artistic tradition while New York was his inspiration. Main subjects of Chao's work include flowers and fish, birds, the cosmos and abstraction. This piece "Family of Birds & Yin Yang" fully displays the oriental aesthetic beauty of Chinese painting yet at the same time reflect a Western influence with the bold use of colour. Birds were used rather than human figures to express familial love and support. From 1970s he painted the Yin-Yang symbols and hexagrams derived from the I-Ching. Blocks of dazzling florescent colour sporadically float upon expressive images rendered in rich ink washes. His works are permeated with Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

MAJOR PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
The Brooklyn Museum, Columbia University, New York University, Queens Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers; Russel Sage College, Albany, NY; Stamford Art Museum, Stamford, CT; University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD; Norwalk Museum, Norwalk, CT, USA; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei; Museum of Art, Taichung, Taiwan; Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong

Walasse Ting  (born 1929 Wuxi China, currently lives in Amsterdam)

Solo exhibition presented by Alisan Fine Arts
-Walasse Ting 10th Exhibition, April to May 2008
-First exhibition in Hong Kong in 1986
-Last exhibition in Hong Kong in 2002

Ting left for Paris at the young age of nineteen after studying briefly at the Shanghai Art Academy. In 1958, he travelled to New York. Befriending American artist Sam Francis, Ting was strongly influenced by this movement and the works of Picasso. His paintings were filled with bold dripping strokes mixed with bright acrylic pigments. But by the 1970's, he began experimenting with figures thus developing the distinctive style that today is so familiar.

Ting's paintings are a sheer testimony to love, life and beauty. His women, flowers, cats, fish, horses and watermelons are couched in acrylic on rice paper delineated in Chinese ink through powerfully effervescent brush strokes in a rich palette of bright colours: the artist's core visual vocabulary. Regarding his Chinese ink painting, the strength of his composition and the different textures of his ink are powerfully revealed. And it is Ting's use of ink and line that so strongly remind the viewer of his Chinese roots.

Selected Collections:
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Chicago Art Institute, Chicago; Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit; Musée Cernuschi, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong; Fine Art Museum, Taipei; Tate Gallery, London; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai