Chao Shao-an

Chao Shao-an was a Hong Kong painter who shaped modernist approaches to Chinese ink painting. Surviving all of the twentieth-century conflicts in China, from the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 to the return of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, Chao ruminated on these events through the metaphorical subject of bird-and-flower painting. He spent most of his life separated from mainland China but is currently being reclaimed as an apolitical traditionalist by museums and art historians of China.

Chao Shao-an demonstrating at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum 1960

This exhibition highlights Chao’s work as an innovative modernist who advanced the expressive possibilities of ink painting and subtly reflected on his biography within an otherwise staid genre. These fourteen album-leaf paintings represent a period late in the artist’s life when he examined intimate moments of transition within the natural world as a means of reflecting on the many seismic changes that occurred across his own long life. They also embody Chao Shao-an’s remarkable legacy as the most quietly influential international instructor of modernist Chinese painting from the twentieth century. 

A painting where cicadas sitting on bamboo.

蟬鳴竹葉間 [Cicada cries among the bamboo leaves]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

A painting of a cicada hanging on a bamboo branch

吸露憐高潔 [Breathing dew lofty and unsullied]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

A bird gazing on top of a branch.

枝上遠眺 [Distant gazing atop a branch]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

A bird about to fly off a tree branch.

歡歌 [Joyous song]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

A flower with red and green colors.

螳螂漫步 [Mantis ambling]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

Painting of insects swarming the lotus head.

蜂聚蓮蓬 [Swarming the lotus head]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

Painting of flowers of black and white color with a red accent to it.

戲花叢中 [Playing among the blossoms]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

Painting of a crab walking.

螃蟹登頂 [Crab summiting]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

Painting of a fish of white and golden color swimming.

悠來自閑 [Leisurely arrival from idleness]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

Painting of a man fishing on a boat.

悠然垂釣 [Fishing in leisure]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

Painting of an insect that seems to be climbing a rock.

咽露 [Supping dew]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

Painting of plants coming out of what appears to be rock.

靈石 [Numinous rock]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

Painting of insect feasting on corn.

盛宴 [Feast]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong

Painting of three pomegranates.

石榴 [Pomegranate]
c. 1970s-80s
38 x 30 cm
Ink and pigment on paper
Estate of the artist, Hong Kong