Contemporary Chinese Art, an exhibition of works from the collection of Pat Hui
Pat Hui is a private dealer in Chinese art, as well as an active painter, writer, and translator. Born in Hong Kong, she studied Western and Chinese philosophy at the University of Hong Kong, and later, Western philosophy and Chinese and Indian Buddhism at the University of Minnesota. From 1961 to 1962, she studied painting with Lui Shou Kwan. He has remained an important influence in her life. In 1980, she formed Hui Art in Toronto, representing art works from contemporary Chinese artists. From 1982 to 1986 she was the director and owner of Hui Art in Minneapolis. An avid and passionate collector, Pat Hui has an outstanding collection of contemporary Chinese art. This will be the first time many of the works in her collection will be exhibited in the United States. About her collection, Hui comments:
What is in common among many of the artists in my collection is that they all have great respect for the long history of tradition in Chinese painting, and they also feel the impact of Western influences, most noticeably, abstract art and expressionism. They are the first generation of Chinese artists that try to bridge the gap between tradition and modernity, between East and West, coming up with their own distinct, individual styles.
Two of the many artists featured in the exhibition include Lui Shou-Kwan and Wucius Wong. When Lui Shou-Kwan died in 1975, he was exalted by art critic Nigel Cameron in Hong Kong as one of the greatest Chinese painters of the 20th century. "Probably he was the greatest in the last 200 years or so." Lui accepted the challenges of Western influences, especially that of abstraction. He was one of the first ones to embrace Western style and theory into his painting.
Robert Jacobsen, chief curator of Asian Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has called Wucius Wong "One of the five forerunners in contemporary Chinese painting" and gave him the only retrospective show by a Chinese artist in a U.S museum in 1987. Before he was a painter, Wong was a published poet and the author of many books on design in English and Chinese. A former curator at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, he is now teaching Chinese painting at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Contemporary Chinese Art, the collection of Pat Hui, is a wonderful opportunity for the public to see a stunning collection of work by an artist/collector who has dedicated her life to promoting the art of some of the finest contemporary Chinese artists.
