X-ray tests on scores of paintings by renowned Taiwanese artist Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波) have found that more than 20 have another painting below the surface of the canvas.
Seventy-five paintings by Chen went on exhibition at Cheng Shiu University’s art center in Kaohsiung on Wednesday — with X-ray scans next to several of them, showing the hidden artwork under their surfaces.
The center sent the paintings to Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s Kaohsiung branch to be X-rayed for study, and at least 22 underpaintings were found.
Photo: Huang Hsu-lei, Taipei Times
University arts maintenance and restoration center director Lee Yi-cheng (李益成) said the many of paintings uncovered by the scans were nudes of women.
Lee said the original artworks could have been painted over at a time when Chen was not well off financially and could not afford new canvases, or were deliberately repainted as landscapes because Chen feared that the nudes, which were mostly painted during his studies in Japan, would not be accepted in Taiwan’s art market.
Lee said Chen had painted a lot of nudes of women when he studied in Japan between 1924 and 1929, but that nude women was a favorite theme with Chen, who had also sketched and done oil painting and watercolors of nudes during a stay in Shanghai from 1929 to 1933, and after he returned to Taiwan in 1933.
Although traditional X-ray film was limited in size and needed to be developed, modern digital X-ray film has greatly increased the chance that art restoration experts will find such hidden paintings.
The scans also allow art restorers to draw a chronological line to the original artist’s works and pinpoint the era in which a painting was done.
Citing a 1931 painting of Chen’s son as an example, Lee said the X-ray scans showed a painting underneath of the back of an Aboriginal man, which was similar to a sketch of an Aboriginal man that Chen drew in 1930.
The free exhibition runs until Dec. 4 and is open from 9am to 5pm, Monday through Friday.
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