Unruly, flowing lines intertwine to form cells with different shapes and colors. What do you think the creator was trying to convey with the softly-colored blocks and crude black lines? A mood or an idea?

The artist Hsiao Ming-hsien was born in Nantou. In 1952 at the age of 18, he entered Taiwan Provincial Taipei Normal School and, at the same time, was learning painting at the studio of Li Chung-sheng. Hsiao’s abstract paintings have been influenced by Paul Klee while also incorporating structural principles of Chinese epigraphs as creative elements. For example, in this work titled Composition, there is a tendency to flatten the space in the image, to create a strong visual contrast by combining crude black lines and colored blocks like architectural and epigraphic structures. This work was part of the 4th São Paulo Art Biennial in Brazil in 1957, where it won an honorable mention.

Hsiao Ming-hsien was the youngest of the founding members of Ton Fon Art Group, which was a proponent of modern painting, with the creation of a new painting vocabulary as their mission. The name “Ton Fon”in Mandarin is for “the East”and emphasizes the value of traditional Chinese aesthetics in modern art. As such, Hsiao has always used abstract forms and lines in his creations. Early works incorporate the unadorned lines of epigraphy, while works in the middle stage of his life use the abstract lines of calligraphy. Hsiao’s works have always aimed to combine eastern and western concepts, merging the emotional and the rational and showing his personal sentiments.