An exhibition of the work of Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波), a renowned Taiwanese painter killed during the 1947 anti-government uprising and ensuing bloody crackdown following the 228 Incident, opened yesterday at Taipei’s National Palace Museum.
The Taipei showing of Hidden Talent — Chen Cheng-po Exhibition, an exhibition marking the 120th year of the artist’s birth next year, is the last leg of a tour of East Asia that has taken in Greater Tainan, Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo. The exhibition is by far the largest and most comprehensive showcase of Chen’s works to date.
Each stop of the exhibition has had a different theme, with the National Palace Museum showing works that combine Eastern and Western themes and use techniques influenced by tradtional Chinese painting, according to the museum.
Photo: Chen Yi-chuan, Taipei Times
It features more than 100 works, including oil and watercolor paintings, sketches, Chinese ink and wash paintings and calligraphy, as well as dozens of the artist’s letters, manuscripts and personal belongings. Among them is an oil painting called Qing Liu (清流), meaning lucid water, which depicts a prominent motif in Chen’s work — West Lake in Hangzhou, China. National Cheng Kung University professor of art history Hsiao Chong-ray (蕭瓊瑞), the curator of the National Palace exhibition, said Qing Liu was Chen’s favorite work.
The work is painted employing the tong diao technique, a unified color tone that is seen in Chinese ink-wash painting. The work stresses a single color — yellow — whereas in traditional Chinese ink wash paintings the single color black is employed, he said.
Also displayed is Chen’s last work, Yu Shan Ji Xue (玉山積雪), meaning snow accumulated on Yushan, depicting the nation’s highest peak covered in snow.
It was shortly after completing that painting in 1947, that Chen, then one of six representatives in peace talks with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime, was executed in public in Chiayi City by authorities as the government violently cracked down on unrest.
Born in 1895, Chen is often described as a pioneer of art in modern Taiwan.
In 1924, he went to Japan to study at what was then known as the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of the Arts) and became the first Taiwanese artist to have his work featured in the Imperial Art Exhibition.
In an interview in 1934, Chen said: “What I want to present in my paintings is the dynamism of lines. I also use dry brushing to enliven my works, or shall I say some kind of mysterious force beyond words has permeated my paintings! This is where I focus my efforts when I paint. We are Easterners, so we shouldn’t adopt the styles of Western painters indiscriminately.”
The exhibition, jointly organized by the National Palace Museum, the Greater Tainan Government, Academia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwan History and the Chen Cheng Po Cultural Foundation, is due to run until March 30 at the National Palace Museum.
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