Chen Tao-Ming

Biography

As a founding member of the Ton-Fan Group, Chen was the first to devote to the abstract painting and the development of the techniques. His early sketches, which focused on graffiti character, responded to the post-war trend of abstraction in painting. His work is full of contrasts between Eastern and Western painting strategies and materials, harmonized through the integration of ‘time’ into visual expression and the processing of media. Chen has been eager to explore the variations of materials, formations, and colors. After the 1980s, he made use of the fluidity of water-based paints such as acrylics and watercolors to generate atlas-like tableaus vibrating with musical rhythms. In his later works, the reduction of geometric compositions and tangible symbols has led to a greater focus on the expression of vibrancy. The textures that naturally occur in the painting create highly complex and fascinating layers. Chen's abstract paintings emphasize experimentation in texture and structural expression, with soft and lyrical color, sculpting a microcosm through layers of paint. The concrete matters and abstract momentum come to clash on the canvas to allow the mind to freely wander in time, reflecting his inner vibrancy of life and the capture of time.

Chen Tao-Ming, born in Shangdong, China, 1931. Chen began to study traditional Chinese painting at the age of eight. He came to Taiwan with his family in 1949, entered the Fine Art Department of the Taiwan Provincial Normal School (currently National Taipei University of Education) in the same year and began studying modern painting with Li Chun-Shan. In 1956, he co-founded Ton-Fan Group, the first abstract painting group in Chinese region, in Taipei with seven artists including Hsiao Chin, Li Yuan-chia, Yan Hsia, etc., which led the painting revolution in Taiwan. Chen was therefore dubbed as one of "The Eight Highwaymen of the East". In 1959, he participated in International Youth Biennale in Paris and was selected as one of the most promising artists by the Parisian art critics. He was invited to participate in the Sao Paulo Art Biennial in Brazil in 1959 and 1965, and was awarded the Silver Medal in the Hong Kong International Salon of Paintings in 1962. His works were collected by Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung; National Museum of History, Taipei.