(born in Shanghai in 1935, lives and works in Milan)
Untitled (Surya-Sun series), 1966, signed and dated 1966, mixed media on canvas, 100 x 130 cm, framed

This work is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity signed by the artist

Provenance:
European Private Collection (acquired directly from the artist)

Born in Shanghai in 1935, Hsiao Chin left for the Republic of China (present day Taiwan) in 1949 and graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the National Taiwan Normal University in 1955.
A radical of the period, Hsiao was part of the Ton-Fan Art Group, a collective of artists inspired by contemporary Western art and influenced, in particular by the history of post-war Western abstraction. Greatly inspired by nature whilst striving for spontaneity in artistic gestures balancing fullness and emptiness, these artists would quickly assimilate and above all interpret it to freely express their own identity.
By the mid-1950’s, Hsiao had developed his very first works of abstraction and was awarded the Spanish Government Scholarship to study in Spain in 1956. Paintings referring to this period are characterized by a limited primary colour palette generously applied in broad expanses to the canvas. Motifs and calligraphic forms from his home culture are evident and translated as closed forms, composed on a flat pictorial space. In 1959, Hsiao immigrated to Milan and matured as an avant-garde artist under the mentorship of Mazzotta and G.Marconi.
By the mid-1960’s Hsiao Chin became increasingly interested in representing the infinite. He captured the cosmos in his minimalistic works, limited in their range of colours and utilizing regular forms, seeking to refine representations of beauty with pure simplicity.

Hsiao started the Surya (“sun”) series after being inspired by the religious paintings in Tibetan Buddism and Mandalas at the beginning of the 1960s.
Echoing the contemporary language of Optical Art through an infinite sense of movement, he put the circular shape of the sun at the centre of his composition using contrasting colours to attract the viewer’s attention. Focusing on the exploration of the universe and infinite space he tries to express his ideas of heaven and earth by using simple geometric lines.