Acrylic on paper

127 x 64 cm.50 x 25 1/4 in.

Stamped with two artist’s seals in the center
Hsiao Chin
(b.1935-)
In addition to founding “Eastern Painting Society” to promote the development of modern art in Taiwan in 1950s, Hsiao Chin, in 1960s in Italy, was precisely a vigorous and spirited young talent, he not only became an important window for introducing Western contemporary art into Taiwan, but also was in full swing in creating his own part of art world across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1961, Hsiao Chin co-founded the international “Punto” art movement with like-minded artists around him, in the expectation of getting rid of the then popular trend of “non-figurative art” but criticized and coerced by Western consumerism, they tried to start from the ideological level of philosophy, contemplation and introspection to carry out some kind of hoping and outlook for future ideal society and life. In terms of Hsiao Chin himself, the acceptance of his teacher Li Zhong-Sheng’s viewpoints of emphasizing “collectively using hands, eyes, heart and brain” and his study on Philosophy of Lao Zi in his early years have a key influence for the reason of such change of art concept; and after moved to Milan, he was inspired by the plane, silent, and three-dimensional works of Spatialism master Lucio Fontana, however, Hsiao Chin had intertwined these two parallel viewpoints into his works and thus ushered a new creative foothold.

In 1963, Hsiao Chin’s pictures had faded the continuously twisted lines like flying white cursive scripts and the relaxed strip curves painted with row strokes, what instead of were works having a kind of more space segmentation along with laid large color blocks, among them the extensive use of rectangular and circular shapes found a unprecedented balance and full for pictures, and this is an important and most representative look in works of Hsiao Chin. Just like what demonstrated in this piece of work “Quiet Setting”, the picture is finely divided by rigorous and neat rectangles, two red circles of sun are symmetrically and separately placed on both sides, so Hsiao Chin used minimalist styling vocabulary to create an universe space full of both dualistic opposition and dualistic harmony, while the large areas of blankness on background extend the artist’s in-depth understanding of Taoist thought.

Interpreting from the constituting angle of picture, it is not difficult to find that Hsiao Chin has some degree of similarity with American abstract master Mark Rothko. In the color gamut works of Rothko, he tried very hard to reflect profound spirits and basic emotions, as well as sacred religious experiences through limited colors and minimal shapes. For Rothko’s works, Hsiao Chin is deeply familiar with and favorite, but the mysterious religiousness and the extremely quiet and eternal setting in his works are not originated from Western civilization, but drawn from traditional Chinese culture. And those symmetric and balanced dots make people associate them with the shape and meaning of Chinese “tai chi diagram”.

"Chi-313" was created in 1981. In this period, Hsiao Qing’s creations had two basic directions can be found: the first is using automatic pouring of mental images to form the presentation of ink marks and color dots on picture, while the other is using minimalist shapes to metaphorically imply the understanding of life, from the flowing row of brushes and ink colors this work "Chi-313" seemingly belongs to the former. Prana (Chi) is life breath, before titling the work as this, Hsiao Qing’s this series of works was titled as "Ch’an", in terms of form "Ch’an" is mostly depicted with round brushes, while "Chi" turns into row of brushes imposing more majestic momentum. Whether "Ch'an" or "Chi", at this time the artist had completely departed from previous life scenarios of extreme quietness and meditation, also bid farewell to those work styles and appearances of ethereal attunement, minimalist and perfection, and marched into another creative peak of endless force and momentum and billowing inspiration and ideas.

Price estimate:
HKD：240,000 - 280,000
USD：31,000 - 36,000

Auction Result:
HKD: --