In my beginning is my end: art by Hsiao Chin

Hsiao Chin was born in Shanghai in 1935 and his creative work is saturated by a deep understanding of Chinese culture. Equally, his paintings radiate knowledge of the history of European art. In the 1950s, he and a number of fellow thinkers founded the first Chinese abstract art society – the Ton-Fan Art Group. He was also the founder of the European avant-garde movement “Movimento Punto” in the early 1960s in Italy (Milan).

In the late 1950s, Hsiao Chin arrived in Spain, but found its art education too “conservative” and moved to Milan, which at the time was a hub for artists from around the world. Alongside artists like Lucio Fontana he helped shape European abstract painting. But it should also be noted that his encounter with Milan and European culture prompted him to reflect on the Chinese traditions that had nurtured his early life.

The artist’s paintings included in the book fuse Western and Asian elements of painting and culture, creating drama out of the encounter of traditional Chinese brushstrokes with the colour palette of European painting, through the language of Buddhism and Western modernism.