Hung Liu

Place: Changchun

Born: 1948

Death: 2021

Biography:

Early Life and Artistic Beginnings

, a Chinese-born American contemporary artist, was born on February 17, 1948, in Changchun, China. Her life, marked by the Cultural Revolution, significantly influenced her artistic style. At the age of 10, she moved to Beijing, where she attended the Experimental High School Attached to Beijing Normal University. In 1970, during the Cultural Revolution, Liu was sent to Huairou, a small village in the Beijing countryside, where she lived and worked among local villagers from 1968 to 1972.

Artistic Style and Themes

Liu's artistic style is characterized by layered brushstrokes combined with washes of linseed oil, giving her images a unique, drippy appearance. Her paintings often feature anonymous Chinese historical and contemporary photographs, particularly those of women, children, refugees, and soldiers. This visual strategy has been described as the opposite of the rigid academicism of the Chinese Socialist Realist style in which Liu was trained.

• Her painting style has been characterized by her partner, critic, and curator Jeff Kelley, as a kind of 'weeping realism.'
• Many works were drawn from the artist's personal collection of 19th-century Chinese photographs, featuring prostitutes.
• Liu believed her paintings 'gives a spirit to them, the forgotten.'

Notable Works and Exhibitions

's work has been featured in several exhibitions, including:

• Summoning Ghosts: The Art of Hung Liu, a retrospective collection of her work with paintings from over 40 collections.
• Her American Exodus series, addressing American subject matter, creating images of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression after the photographs of Dorothea Lange.
• Strange Fruit paintings, depicting Korean 'comfort women' forced to serve as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers in World War II.

Legacy and Impact

's work has been recognized for its unique blend of Chinese and American influences. Her use of photography in her painting practice, starting from the mid-1980s, reflects her interest in the political tensions between objective truths reflected in a photograph versus the mediated vision in a painting.

• She was one of the first artists from China to establish a career in the United States.
• Liu's work has been collected and exhibited by top museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art.
• Her legacy continues to inspire artists and audiences alike, offering a unique perspective on time, memory, and the human experience.

View Hung Liu's Artworks on Wikioo.org

[https://Wikioo.org/@/HungLiu](https://Wikioo.org/@/hungliu) | View Hung Liu's 16 Artworks on Wikioo.org [https://Wikioo.org/Art.nsf/O/93PVEY](https://Wikioo.org/art.nsf/o/93pvey) | New dimension in art display - Clicking on the tab Artists on top of any page at the Wikioo.org.com web site takes you to the block of names of hundreds of artists in western art... [Wikipedia.org](https://www.wikipedia.org/) | Hung Liu's biography and artworks on Wikipedia Note: The article is written in English for analysis, as per your request. If you need it translated into German, please provide the translation guidelines.