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1976

USIS Hosts Hung Tung Solo Exhibition

美新處舉辦洪通個展

  • Source:
  • Hung Tung
    From: Taiwan WORD

    Hung Tung was born in 1920 in Kun-chiang Village, Pei-men Township, Nan-kun-shen, Tainan County, Taiwan. His father died before he was born, and his mother passed away when he was four, so he was raised primarily by his fifth uncle in circumstances of poverty. He never had the opportunity to attend school and thus could not read or write. In 1945, the 26-year-old Hung Tung returned to his hometown and married Liu Lai-yu of Tainan; they had three sons and two daughters, and the couple continued to make ends meet through odd jobs. Before 1970, Hung Tung had worked in various roles — fisherman, spirit medium, and others. At the age of fifty, Hung Tung suddenly developed a passionate interest in painting. He shut himself away to study on his own, while also regularly visiting painters in Tainan city to learn their techniques, and spending over a year at the studio of the artist Tseng Pei-yao. In 1972, a chance photography competition at the Nan-kun-shen Tai-tian Temple gave Hung Tung the opportunity to display his works by hanging them in front of the temple. The mysterious character-like imagery and vivid use of color attracted the attention of a Han Sheng Magazine reporter, who published a feature on him. In the following two or three years, the media covered him extensively, igniting a “Hung Tung craze” in the 1970s. In 1973, Hsiung-shih Art Monthly published a special “Hung Tung Feature” in its April issue, and the art world began to study and discuss Hung Tung and his paintings. On March 13, 1976, Hung Tung held his first solo exhibition at the Lincoln Center of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) in Taipei, showing over a hundred works. The unceasing crowds of visitors shook the Taiwanese art world, bringing the Hung Tung phenomenon to its peak.

    Tags

  • Local
  • Local Consciousness
  • Modernism
  • America
USIS Hosts Hung Tung Solo Exhibition
#Modernism#Nativist Consciousness#United States#本土

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