Jang Guang-bin, aka Jang Hsu-hsien or Jang Yu-huan, was born on 28th October 1921 in Sichuan Province, China. He graduated from the National Hangchou Academy of Arts, having received specialized training in Chinese painting from great masters and art historians Fu Pao-shih and Lee Ko-jan. Throughout his artistic career, Jang Guang-bin has held many solo exhibitions in Taiwan Province Museum of Fine Arts (now National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts), the Taiwan Province Museum (now National Museum of Taiwan), and National Museum of Arts (now National Taiwan Arts Education Center). A multi award winning artist, Chang has won the top prize at the Taiwan Province Fine Arts Exhibition (Chinese calligraphy), the Golden Seal Award, The Chung-Hsing Award for Arts and Culture and the National Museum of History Golden Honorary Medal. His publications included The Four Masters of the Yuan Dynasty, Collection of Essays on the Painting and Calligraphy of the Yuan Dynasty, The History of Chinese Calligraphy, Painting Flowers and Bamboos and The Art of Chinese Calligraphy. Jang Guang-bin has served as a Research Fellow at the Department of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting, National Palace Museum, Professor of Chinese Art at the National College of Arts (now National Taipei University of the Arts), a member of the assessment board at the Taiwan Province Fine Arts Exhibition and the collection committee of the Taiwan Province Museum of Fine Arts. Memberships included the ROC Society of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting, and the ROC Fine Arts Association.
Professor Jang Guang-bin is a specialist of traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting, mastering seal script, clerical script and cursive script. He is the most prominent practitioner of the “standard cursive script calligraphy”, which was advocated by Yu You-jen. The later years of his art career saw him seeking innovation in terms of artistic styles while returning to natural simplicity in terms of art contents. Jang's paintings are characterized by refined yet casual brush strokes and great depth of artistic expression. At the age of 91, he invented a new flat calligraphic brush stroke which gave his Chinese landscape painting a unique character of grandeur. Jang Guang-bin's Chinese paintings are mostly on long scrolls. This painting, Infinity, combines characteristics of theatricality and sophistication. It is widely regarded as a representative piece of the later period of Jang Guang-bin's art career.
Jang Guang-bin's artistic career has spanned almost one century. For decades since his arrival in Taiwan, he has served as a research fellow at the National Palace Museum, where he developed a stream of research on the history of Chinese calligraphy and painting, with particularly high achievement in the paintings of the Yuan Dynasty. Profoundly influenced by his mentors, great advocates of innovation in Chinese art Fu Pao-shih and Lee Ko-jan, Jang Guang-bin has been rather at ease with both tradition and innovation throughout his long and distinguished artistic career.
Chinese title: | 江山無盡 |
English title: | Infinity |
Decade: | 2007 |
Medium / Classification: | ink painting and calligraphy |
Dimensions: | 61×1701 cm |
Artist: | Jang Guang-bin |
Life-span: | 1915 - |
Collection Unit: | National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts |
Contact method for authorization: | Guide to the Use of Image Files and Data from the Online Collection Database |
Related Exhibition: | Unique Vision:Highlights from the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts Collection |