Chuang Che

Chuang Che was born in Beijing in 1934. His father, Chuang Shang-Yen, was a scholar and calligrapher who worked at the National Palace Museum. Che was thus introduced at a young age to calligraphy, an art that directly influences his painting. He studied in the Fine Arts Department at National Taiwan Normal University during 1954-57. In 1966, he was awarded a J.D. Rockefeller III Fund travel grant to study in the United States, and just a year later, his works were collected by the Cleveland Art Museum and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Che's work merges traditional techniques of his Chinese heritage with Abstract Expressionist influences of time spent in Europe and America. This meeting of East and West is consistently at the forefront of his work. He remarks: ”No art can mature by itself; it has to absorb nutrition from the rest of the world's art. I've always had this ideal: to see a fusion of Chinese and Western painting.” Che has lived in the United States since 1973. His work has been exhibited at museums and galleries around the globe. Selected collections include: Cleveland Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Hong Kong Museum of Art; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; University of Michigan Museum of Art; Shanghai Art Museum; List Visual Arts Center at MIT; Harvard Art Museums; and Centre Pompidou in Paris.