Tags: art | Chang Yi-Hsiung | painting

Chang Yi-Hsiung (1914–), 1987
Oil painting, 89 x 70.5 cm

Born in Tungmen of Chiayi City, Chang Yi-Hsiung learned sketching and oil painting from Chen Cheng-Bo as a young man. He then advanced his study at Kawabata Painting School in Japan, which marked the beginning of his nomadic life. Having taught at National Taiwan Normal University and National University of Arts, Chang contributed to the fine arts education in the 1950s. He resided in Japan in the 60s and currently lives in Paris, the city he deemed the most beautiful. Yellow Flowers is the still life oil painting Chang painted in 1987 at the age of 73. Influenced by Cubists’ use of split structure, he applied large patches of colors and black contours to distinguish between background and still life (the chair and yellow flowers). With a preference for palette knife, Chang created a simple and clear-cut composition, in which the yellow flowers stand out as the focal point of the painting and their vibrant color contrasts with the morose background. In his later years, Chang gained more insight on depicting still life. He once said, “Compared to pretty landscapes, I can instill more of my personalities into still life paintings and better express my own unique style.”

Department of Graphic Communications and Digital Publishing, Shih Hsin University Digital archiving project of the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines

Original Chinese text is composed by Professor Cheng-Ming Su, Department of Visual Arts, Taipei Municipal University of Education