Hon Chi Fun Hand Signed Lim.ed 83 Lithograph 韩志勋 Hong Kong Chinese Artist

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Seller: dreamgalerie ✉️ (9,112) 99.8%, Location: San Diego, California, US, Ships to: WORLDWIDE & many other countries, Item: 266395014217 HON CHI FUN HAND SIGNED LIM.ED 83 LITHOGRAPH 韩志勋 HONG KONG CHINESE ARTIST.

 

 韩志勋 HON CHI FUN

1922 Hong Kong    

Hand numbered H.C. 121/150

Hand signed  by Artist (Pencil)

(Please see last photo of the Information about the artist that was included with the artwork in 1984, not included in this auction)

 Was a special Edition "Artist of the world" (100 different artists) for the German Lufthansa Airline 1985 for their first class passengers , 

 Editeur: Meissner Edition,Hamburg

1983

Image size: 4" x 4" (10,0 x 10,0 cm)

Paper size: 6" x 5.5" (15,0 x 14,0 cm)

very good condition, never framed, 

Please see Photo's as part of the item description, since they are photo's of the actual Artwork you will receive! There always might be slight color variation from the Original to the colors you see on the photo's.

 

Tang Hoi-chi

Mr. Hon Chi-fun (1922 –) is a native-born Hong Kong artist. His growing-up years coincided with the territory’s evolving into a modern society while, as an artist, his career, style and achievements stand as testimony to the movement towards modernity in local art, and serve as a symbol of the distinctive identity and spirit of Hong Kong culture.

Until the mid-1950’s, art in Hong Kong was arguably still in its infancy, growing chiefly by carrying on the legacy transplanted from mainland China. This was highlighted by the arrival of many mainland artists, particularly those once active on the scene in adjacent Guangdong area, who had fled the country amid political unrest, civil wars, and change of power, and immigrated to the then British colony.

This was particularly true in the field of Chinese painting and calligraphy. Among the artists of the traditional school who came to Hong Kong were leading members of the Research Society of Chinese Painting, Guangdong and some second-generation followers of the Lingnan School of Painting, who paved the way for the progress henceforth of Chinese painting and calligraphy in Hong Kong.

In a kindred field, there were artists who split their time between Hong Kong and Guangdong or had once sojourned in Hong Kong, including Lee Bing, Yee Bon, Wong Shiu-ling and Ng Po-wan. They engaged in watercolour and oil painting primarily by keeping up the mainland Chinese ways and styles while drawing on principles and techniques of Western schools like Classicism, Realism and Impressionism.

Thus, artists in these two fields laid a foundation for future advances in both Chinese and Western painting in Hong Kong.

During the late 1950’s, life in Hong Kong became easier for new immigrants and original residents alike, as the political situation calmed down and the economy turned up. People in the cultural circles now could afford the leisure and space to pursue their artistic cultivations. It is noteworthy that a new fashion in art and literature arose in the late 1950’s and grew into a fresh cultural trend in the 1960’s, exerting a strong influence on the trailblazing exploration in fields of art in Hong Kong. The initial phase of Hon Chi-fun’s career was intertwined with the cultural and societal fabrics of his time. His parents, like those in conventional families then, expected him to learn traditional Chinese culture. They put little Chi-fun in a private class for some early education, then sent him to an old-fashioned school. There he made acquaintance with various subjects of traditional Chinese culture including calligraphy and classical-style poetry, thus starting his life-long passion and yearning for traditional Chinese art and literature. Then Hon Chi-fun went on to Wah Yan College Kowloon. It was an English-medium school with a fairly liberal atmosphere. The teachers were all from mainland China, including Mr Lau King-chee, who initiated Chi-fun into the basics of Chinese painting.

After Hong Kong fell to the Japanese army during the war, the Hon family took refuge in the mainland, moving from place to place. In 1956 Hon Chi-fun returned to Hong Kong, and found a job in the General Post Office.

He was a civil servant now but, like many trendy young people then, he enjoyed speedy motorbike rides through the countryside around the city, making sketches wherever he found the scenery appealing. That was how he met Luis Chan, one of the leading advocates for Western and modernist art in those early years. His eclectic tastes in Western art schools, liberal-minded adoption of their techniques, and his own versatile style were an eye-opener for Hon Chi-fun the budding artist.

By then Hong Kong’s young generation had grown an enthusiasm about the rising trends in literature and art.

In 1959, Hon Chi-fun took part in a group exhibition held in St John’s Cathedral. In 1960, the first Hong Kong Arts Festival was held. The event was joined by a number of artists who had started the movement towards modernism in local art, including senior artists Lui Shou-kwan, Douglas Bland, and Kwong Yeu-ting. Hon Chi-fun was among those who exhibited their works. That first Arts Festival became the event marking the up-anchoring, so to speak, of modern art in Hong Kong.

The subsequent decade of 1960’s saw the advent of many new cultural facilities and art societies. In 1962, the building of the City Hall was completed, which housed City Hall Art Gallery and Museum, the predecessor of today’s Hong Kong Museum of Art and Hong Kong Museum of History.

In 1963 Hon Chi-fun held his first solo exhibition at the Chatham Gallery, where he met ink-painting master Lui Shou-kwan and several other members of Modern Literature and Art Association. Through discussions with them, Hon Chi-fun came to learn about Mr Lui’s theory on ink-wash painting and about the modernistic ideas of the Association’s members. From such interactions he drew inspiration, but in his artistic explorations he stuck to his own course, aiming to project his own features.

The year of 1958 witnessed the birth of Modern Literature and Art Association founded by a group of artists and literati including Shum Quanan, Li Yinghao, Wen Lou, Cheung Yee, Wucius Wong, and King Chia-lun. They explored the new schools of literature and art, thereby starting a movement towards modernity in Hong Kong’ art fields.

In 1964 Hon Chi-fun and his friends founded the Circle Art Group, which later would rank among the leading groups devoted to bringing Hong Kong art to modernity. In 1965 he learnt to master the techniques of silk-screen, and in 1966 he created his first batch of silk-screen paintings.

The period from mid-1950’s to early 1960’s was the initial phase of Hon Chi-fun’s art creation. He worked hard at painting, and frequently made tours in the suburbs and through the countryside around the city, doing sketches. His paintings of this period featured a blend of some near-Realistic approach and some Western-like style, or a style evocative of Impression. Examples include On Wet Soil (1962)1, Tai Po Road (1960’s)2, Village by the Sea (1960)3, and Sai Kung(1962)4.

These oil paintings of his early efforts revealed an Impressionist approach to light, colour, and perspective as well as an influence from Realism, complete with a certain flavour suggestive of the style of Luis Chan the elder-generation artist. These elements formed a solid foundation for Hon Chi-fun’s mastery of oil painting techniques.

Around 1963, after making acquaintance with Lui Shou-kwan and other members of Modern Literature and Art Association, he started to evolve a fresh style of painting. His bold sweeps of massive brushstrokes produced an effect like that of ink wash, while his use of colour suggested the technique in Chinese painting that presents ink black in various hues and shades. Hon Chi-fun’s works in this period reflected a tight tension between the constraints of the pictorial composition and the artist’s eager attempts to break away. Examples include Colloquy (1964)5, A Nothing (1964)6, and Black Crack (1964)7.

Meanwhile, his paintings like Lost Shore (1965)8 and Hsiang (1965)9 displayed a riot of dynamic brushstrokes interwoven with some rhythmic shapes of Chinese characters, and with a swash of scarlet adding impact to the composition. Obvious here is a tendency towards abstract expression, which has produced an effect similar to that in Chinese painting and calligraphy achieved through abstract lines in ink.

In 1963 Hon Chi-fun created an oil painting Untitled10, which represented one of his early experiments with the form of “circle” as a pictorial element in his repertoire. The circular form, apparently revolving, is here set in sharp contrast to those massive, calligraphy-like brushstrokes on the right-hand portion of the composition.

The contrast, similar to the contrast in the above-said paintings between black and white, or between substance and void, carries an Eastern spirit and an ink-wash-like flavour. Yet these paintings all indicated a tendency towards a Western-style mode of abstract expression.

They well illustrated how a native Hong Kong artist, with a background in Chinese culture and an Eastern art tradition, sought after Western-style modernity. On this point his fellow artist Wucius Wong made the following comment:

“He makes abstract art not for the sake of being abstract; he does it to assert the Eastern soul of the individual.”

Hon Chi-fun was one of those artistically inclined youth of his time; he was eager to make experiments in his pursuits and to break away from what he had already attained. That was due to young people’s vitality, their realism and aspiration for excellence. Now, having passed the phase of making sketches, and having experienced the realm of bold and sweeping brushstrokes, Hon Chi-fun now started to search for images that transcend the confines of the two-dimensional composition, and to bring Western forms of expression into his own oil painting works.

Therefore, in Blue Swirl (1966), to the broad sweeps of brushstrokes and bold splashes of colour, he added an iron wheel, thus further boosting the dynamic feel and the temporal sense of the picture11. Then, in Speedy Past (1966)12, by bringing in some plates of rusted iron, he created a weighty and solid vision out of the sweeps in black ink and in red and brown colour strips. Again, in Remaining Lines (1966)13, by attaching some remnants of a calligraphic stele to the partitioned pictorial composition, he conveyed an archaic feeling of disappearing space and passing time.

And he created sculptures in a similar manner, too. The diversified and yet hard-to-define explorations in those years revealed an anxious quest for breakthroughs on the part of the artist. The tension within his heart had been growing in strength, ready to burst open all the constraints, just as a chick inside the egg is ready to hatch out or the fabled phoenix is ready to start a renewed life through a bath of fire.

“The circle is me, the form of my own being, and the image that I value and cherish. It is the milieu and space at the moment, the world of perfection I seek after.”

That was the artist’s statement in 1981 when summing up his series of “circles”. As is shown above, the first ever image of the circle had appeared in his earlier works like Untitled and Blue Swirl. Then, from late 1960’s onward his paintings became increasingly dominated by the image of the circle – either circles of philosophy or circles of substance – as he described:

“The circle grants me a fourth – and an even more spacious – dimension; it fills even the entire space of the painting, and gives the work a symbol of existence.”

The large-size painting of Bath of Fire (1968)14 marked the opening of a new chapter in the artist’s career, and has left an indelible signpost on the road of evolution of modern art in Hong Kong. This representative tour de force has combined techniques of oil painting with those of silkscreen. It has enlisted skills in colouring and imaging normally used in Western art while incorporating elements of Chinese painting. In the painting, the circles are partitioned into sections and areas, which in turn are inlaid with smaller circles and other images, and the smaller circles contain even smaller circles within them. The composition includes some of the artist’s once-employed images – wheels, remnants of calligraphic works, and texts taken from some Buddhist sutras. Various shades of red and green have mingled with massive, flowing brushstrokes to produce a set of three continuous and mutually contrasted pictures or triptychs that overflow beyond the viewer’s vision field, almost making him feel giddy. ?

This work represented a synthesis of Hon Chi-fun’s previous pictorial vocabulary, which indicated the rise of a fresh style characterized by the use of Western mediums coupled with the essence of Chinese philosophy. In those years, when East and West were wedded to mould art and culture of Hong Kong, this painting became a symbol of Modernist art with Hong Kong characters and spirits. It has also marked a turning-point along the artist’s road towards perfection – out of his maturing phase hitherto, through a rebirth, into a yet uncharted terrain of art.

After creating Bath of Fire, Hon Chi-fun made his first tour of Europe. He came into contact with the hippie counterculture that was in vogue then, attended world-class art events like Venice Biennale in Italy and Documenta in Germany. In 1969 he revisited Britain and Germany. Then he received a JDR III Fund fellowship, which enabled him to reside in New York for a year. After that he toured South America and India, where he seemed to have gained some enlightenment about the Buddhist concepts of spiritual tranquillity, solitude, and emptiness.

Paradoxically, these tours in foreign lands and personal contact with Western art and culture only served to boost his own ideas on art. It dawned on him that, while artistic trends and styles are always superseded by later ones, all techniques remain valid both as the substance and as the function. Therefore, in using photography, the airbrush, the painting knife, or silkscreen printing, all techniques therein stem from the one and same source, and are governed by one and the same principle. And that source and that principle reside in the mind and heart of the artist.

The decade of 1970’s saw the artist’s series of “circles” evolving into pure art. Holding his airbrush and conventional brush, Hon Chi-fun created circle after circle in light upon light – an arc of light, a circular ring of light, light in reflection, and the solar flame – which conceal or reveal their glory in the paintings, in an abstract, restrained and yet suggestive manner.

For example, in Chasm Forever (1971)15, Wet Enigma (1972)16, and Give and Take (1975)17, the artist skilfully brought different shades of colour to smooth transition and merging by means of his airbrush and meticulous brushstrokes. The copulation between the circle and the chasm seems to symbolise the ever-continuing reproduction of life in nature, carrying a mysterious overtone.

Then, in his Frozen Blue (1971)18 and Mountain Faith (1971)19, the artist enriched his arcs and contrasted his colours with inserted texts of some philosophical writings. The viewer is thus led into a spiritual universe that transcends time and space.

And further still, in Karma Focus (1971)20, Up and Away (1974)21, and Secret Code (1974年)22, the artist went on to seek even higher simplicity and purity in the circles. With his airbrush and brushstrokes working in unison, following some rules or surpassing them, Hon Chi-fun created these paintings out of a combination of form and colour, light and shade, and circles in position. This embodies the spiritual process of the artist at work: – “The will is all-focussed though the body moves; the mind is all-weighty but the idea is delicately suggestive”. This is part of the Chinese art’s tradition that values the poetic and carefree soul.

These works allow the viewer a feel of the sentimental nature of the artist’s messages, though his pictorial images were created through rational techniques. The abstract forms, as shown in their ever-varying colours, come well close to the cosmic compassion so well described in this Taoist adage:

The great note is rarefied in sound; The great image has no shape.

Or, even more aptly, it can be summed up in the words of Hsiung Ping-ming, one of the artist’s friends:

“There is nothing but abstract colours developing into abstract forms, and in the nebulous state the circle is taking shape. A primitive form – the simplest and perfect geometric form – is emerging from the ethereal universe. It resembles a dewdrop, but is not dew; it is like a spinning heavenly body yet to cool down, but not the sun, nor the moon, nor any other of the stars in the Milky Way. … The roundness is coming into being; it is coagulating in light, and simultaneously dissolving in light.”

Throughout the 1980’s, Hon Chi-fun continued to add painting after painting to his series of “circles”, but he made some alterations in his style and modes of presentation. Now his circles became more than individual entities pure and complete, and turned into symbols full of swelling tension. Among his works of this period were Legend of a Profile (1981)23 and When Mountains Roar (1981)24, successful specimens of his large-size paintings. Hon Chi-fun once described how he had produced such works in these words:

“Creating large-size paintings was a sacrificial ritual. The artist, after thorough meditations, gives the whole of himself up as an offering. On the blank canvass as if in the air, he moves along as it pleases his body and soul, now tripping lightly, now prancing wildly. Amidst the [brush’s] movements now sweeping, now stalling, and out of the opaque or ethereal nothingness within the composition and beyond it, he leisurely brings an entity of time and space into view.”

The full length of 1001.4 centimetres of another large-size painting, Legend of a Profile, is divided into rectangular sections of unequal sizes. Circular or spherical images, and parts thereof, are presented in these continuous rectangles, in overlapping or contrasting pairs. Varying shades of colour, light, and shadows, apparently fusing with one another while fading in or out, render the circular or spherical images various looks and appearances of weightiness.

The same pattern of composition is also apparent in yet another large-size work, When Mountains Roar, but this painting is divided into rectangular sections of equal sizes. The circular or spherical images in it, shown less in contrasted and corresponding pairs than in Legend of a Profile, are instead brought out in bold colouring effectuated with airbrushing and brushstrokes. Here, in space and time, the circles or spheres appear to be reeling and rolling, arising and overlapping, with the momentum of thunder and tidal waves verily perceivable, as if heralding tomorrow that is moving in, or signifying Nature’s cool sound that is dying down – with commotion or tranquillity hardly describable.

In Sphere Supreme (1987)25 and Silver Profile (1988)26, a square and a rectangular composition respectively, the artist created a golden circle and a white one. They are, however, not in a regular or perfect circular shape, but the bright images against the paler background, the swift brushstrokes, and the flowing drops of colour join to enhance the vigour and momentum of the circles. In comparison with those circular images the artist had created during the 1970’s, these circles appear to feature even greater buoyancy, though less serenity.

All these works reflect an evolving and changed mode of expression or style in the artist, which has well served to bring out his will and idea, as described in his own words:

“During the untrammelled creation of art, the will soars and flutters, yet within a bodily frame that remains unruffled. The will moving about, the body staying still, just like a circle fitting into a square or a square into a circle. … Then, suddenly I realised the paintings I did while soaring about appear to sit quiet, whereas those I did in peace seem to stir with dynamic language – what nameless paradox; what capricious motion and stillness!”

During this period, in addition to his series of “circles”, Hon Chi-fun created some circle-derived, power-filled works, such as A Moment To Be (1986)27 and Volume and Time (1986)28. The arc and suggestively varying colour bring out a portion of the circle, looking like the Earth under pressure. A streak of light peeping out in the lower part of the picture seems to lead the viewer into a cosmic territory of light and shade.

The year 1984 saw the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, and the territory’s scheduled return to Chinese sovereignty unnerved its residents. Then, the 1989 pro-democracy movement that rocked Beijing further made the future even more uncertain and worrying for hongkongers. Therefore, the late 1980’s and early 1990’s witnessed a mass emigration out of the territory. Hon Chi-fun and his wife, Ms Choi Yan-chi, emigrated to Canada. The changed life in a strange land, in a changed state of mind, drove the artist to move on after a period of tarrying, in quest of yet a fresh frontier in art. In this period,

“No longer was there the circle of philosophy, neither the circle of substance. I reflected upon my past journeys at dusk and at dawn, while the mighty waterfalls kept rumbling in my mind as if it were only yesterday. ”

Sound Plus (1991)29 and Heaven and Dust (1992)30 are among the artist’s works in early 1990’s. In the paintings now reappeared the massive, sweeping brushstrokes that used to dominate Hon Chi-fun’s works in his early years as an artist. Yet the changed time, circumstances, and state of mind had now altered the properties of those brushstrokes – no more calm and solid, but instead out-bursting and overflowing to display his passion in abstract terms.

Hon Chi-fun and his wife revisited South America in 1997. The artist went back to Manchu Picchu in Peru and Iguazu Falls on the Brazil-Argentina border. The mighty waterfalls he had experienced 30 years before was still plunging down as ever, between the vast sky and boundless earth, yet the visitor was an entirely different person now.

The resultant works, Las Cataratas (1998)31 and A String of Pearls (1999)32, did present fresh attempts by the artist. The break-loose brushstrokes well bring out the mighty waterfalls – realistic and yet imaginary – displayed in apparent montage, in the form of stills and overlapping images, at once fading in and fading out, like splashing downpour from an empyrean height. Intertwined in the composition are the past, the present, and the future of the artist who, standing now between whence he had come and thence he would go, was enthused with passion for further quest.

Then, A Place That Was33 came in 1998 showing a countryside scene depicted as a series of partially overlapping, telescopic frames of photograph placed against a broadened background. The Chinese-ink-wash-style calmn and tranquillity betrayed the next destination of the artist’s journey of soul – to return to where he had come from.

Hon Chi-fun and his wife came back to Hong Kong in 2000 and settled down. Although at an advanced age now, the artist retained a burning passion for creation, a lasting spirit of modernity. His works in 2004, First Thunder34 and To the Heavenly Brim35, were made out of floods of colour and overflowing brushstrokes, seemingly defying all rules and resorting to neither massive strokes nor “circles” substantive or philosophical. The surging floods in the artist’s mind had merged with his very soul by now. After decades of exploration and evolution, the spirit of modernity in Hon Chi-fun has finally echoed to the call of the individual and returned to the origin of life.

Taking a panoramic view, one can see that the artist’s career holds a distinctive position in modernist art of Hong Kong. While Lui Shou-kwan initiated the modernisation of ink painting in the territory, his artistic vocabulary and concepts were still rooted in the ink-wash tradition. Then, while Wen Lou and Cheung Yee explored the various Western trends and modes of expression, featuring sculptures as their medium, their efforts implied Chinese elements and images. Later, Wucius Wong came and made his contributions while working at the East-West crossroads, with ever-coming new ideas and experiences in modern ink art.

Following these advances, Hon Chi-fun has stayed with Western art as the substance and made use of abstract forms throughout his career. The artist’s quintessential self, however, has remained philosophically Chinese. His solid and yet surging sentiments as revealed in his art reflect his own personality and his subjective mind. Thus, with his surpassing achievements, artist Hon Chi-fun has founded a distinctive school of his own that stands out among the diversified growth of art in Hong Kong.

Hon Chi-fun was born in an era and place full of social unrest and human sorrows. His early life was darkened by the Japanese war of invasion against China, yet the hardship wakened up the ardent artist in him. Infatuated with art as he is, he has been enamoured of words too. His art displaying more sensibility than sense, the artist remains a person of both emotion and reason.

 
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  • Condition: New
  • Edition Size: 999 + H.C. 150 + A.P.51
  • Signed: Signed
  • Size: Small
  • Date of Creation: 1970-1989
  • Material: Paper
  • Subject: Asia
  • Size Type/Largest Dimension: Small (Up to 14")
  • Listed By: Dealer or Reseller
  • Type: Print
  • Edition Type: Limited Edition
  • Style: Chinese
  • Original/Reproduction: Original Print
  • Theme: Art, Topographical
  • Print Type: Lithograph

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