Exhibited:

Love of the Cosmos: The Art of Chao Chung-Hsiang, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, April 16 to 27, 2004; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; Galerie Enrico Navara, Paris, June 2004; Hong Kong Arts Centre; Hong Kong, October 2004

Illustrated:

Chao Chung-hsiang Collection, Alisan Fine Arts Gallery, Hong Kong, 1992, color illustrated, no. 38, pp. 77-78

Chao Chung-hsiang's life was a solitary struggle that saw him wandering from country to country. After graduating from Henan Number One Normal School, during the Second World War he studied at Hangzhou National College of Art, where his teachers included Lin Fengmian, Pan Tianshou and Wu Dayu. In 1948, Chao came to Taiwan, where he took up a teaching position at National Taiwan Normal University; he subsequently played an active role in the early years of the modern art movement in Taiwan. In the mid-1950s, Chao was awarded a scholarship to study in Europe, after which he spent an extended period in New York. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chao produced abstract art that combined influences from European styles and U.S. abstract expressionism; his work attracted the interest of influential institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Queens Museum, and he was a recipient of the Creative Artists Public Service Program Award. In later life, Chao abandoned oil painting and took up traditional Chinese ink brush painting again, developing a modern style of ink brush painting that constituted a fusion of Chinese and Western art.

This work, "Pearls of Roses", combines somber Chinese ink with bright acrylics in a classic example of Chao Chung-hsiang's artistic style. A drip-painting technique of the type used in Western abstract painting has been employed for the background; this technique is also similar to the "ink-splashing" free painting method sometimes used in traditional Chinese painting, which creates a "staining" effect characterized by powerful rhythm and smoothly flowing lines. The luminous blue spirals, arranged in a line running down the picture, are like a string of pearls made up from individual roses, creating a striking sense of movement. The effect is simultaneously classical and modern; its aesthetic appeal surpasses temporal or cultural boundaries.

Chao Chung-hsiang's paintings record events from his life and his artistic quest. As Chao himself once wrote: "Imagine that you are painting a flower. What is important is not so much what variety of flower it is, what color or shape it is, how it holds itself or whether it is in bloom or withered; the important thing is how you capture its magical "style" and its incredible sense of vibrancy and life". "Pearls of Roses" is imbued with the artist's imagination; it embodies both the artist's lifelong passion for abstract art and visual images of great spiritual power. For the modern viewer, this painting can provide not only visual pleasure but also a stimulus towards self-actualization.