The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) has received a donation of 150 works by famed Taiwanese artist Hung Rui-lin (洪瑞麟), and it plans to stage an exhibition of his works in the spring of 2022.
Hung, who died in December 1996 at the age of 84, grew up in Taipei’s Dadaocheng (大稻埕) and went to Japan to study at the Teikoku Art School when he was 18, returning when he was 26.
For several years, he worked as a coal miner in Ruifang (瑞芳), in what is now New Taipei City, married a miner’s daughter, and later became famous for his works depicting the life of Taiwan’s miners.
Photo taken from the Taipei Fine Arts Museum’s Web site
The donation, made by the artist’s eldest son, Hung Chun-hsiung (洪鈞雄), includes 91 works featuring miners, 32 nude sketches, five portraits, eight landscapes, seven works the artist made while in Japan, and seven sketchbooks containing a total of 328 images, the museum said in a statement on Tuesday.
Most of the donated works featuring miners are from the 1950s, which was the peak of Hung Rui-lin's work on miners, it said.
His works have always been representative of “labor realism aesthetics” in Taiwan’s art history, and are sought by many private collectors and research institutions, it said.
With the family’s donation, Hung Rui-lin’s works will be able to return to his hometown, to become an artistic heritage shared by Taiwan’s society, it said.
The museum said that it contacted Hung Chun-hsiung in April and July last year about using images of his father’s works.
On Aug. 6 last year, he sent a letter saying that he was willing to donate works from the family’s collection to the museum, the museum said.
A team from the museum went to Los Angeles in October last year to visit the family and select the works, which officially entered its collection this year, the museum said.
It is now planning an exhibition for the spring of 2022 that would include the donated works, documents and audiovisual records, it added.
Hung Rui-lin’s works fill an “indispensable page” in Taiwan’s art history, and add to the quality of the museum’s collection of works by other Taiwanese artists, it said.
There is no word on whether the works donated to the museum were included in the more than 2,500 pieces that Hung Chun-hsiung announced in January that the family was donating to the Ministry of Culture.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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