Lu Ghi-cheng was born in 1914, originally named Hsu Sheng-ghi. He was adopted in 1915 by his father’s biological family but did not change his family name back to Lu (henceforth called Lu Ghi-cheng) until after the war. In 1928 Lu went to study in Hsuying Shuyuan (academy) in Xiamen. The principal, Wang Yi-yun, was his first mentor, who had maintained a life-long relationship with Lu as a teacher and a friend. From 1933, Lu was regularly (twice a year) selected for the "Hyogo-ken Art Association Exhibition". In 1936 he was invited by Yang San-lang to participate in the second “Tai-yang Art Exhibition.” Lu’s work Scenery in April won the Tai-yang Award, and he began to gather momentum in the art scene. In 1937 Lu organised the Chingtien Painters’ Society. In the same year, he organized the MOUVE Artists’ Society with Chang Wan-chuan, Chen De-wang and others. In 1948, he established the Chingyun Art Society with Chin Jun-tso. Hsu Lang-sung, Wang Yi-yun, Lu Yun-sheng, Huang Ou-po and Hsu Chen-chou; he then devoted his creative life to Chingyun for the next four decades. In 1990, Lu died of lung cancer in Taipei Veterans General Hospital, at the age of 76.

Lu Ghi-cheng preferred using palette knives, which differentiated his stronger texture from other painters’ brushwork. His mountains were muscly and coarse, his work weighty and his style distinctive. His paintings of mountains often consist of unrestricted and staggered arrangements, high contrast in colours and brightness in tones. The work Autumn Mountains with Clouds of 1963 is one of his early paintings of mountains. The foreground, on the right, is composed of withered trees and gentle slopes; near and far, the mountains emerge one after another, and the view begins to open up, which induces in the viewer an intertwining sense of space and time, a sense of movement in temporal and spatial displacement, in the tranquil imagery of the painting. The soft hills in the fore, enriched with bright yellow and orange, appeared lively and animated, which is in clear contrast against the cool tones of dark green in the background. This kind of contrast is characteristic of his style. After 1980, his late works of mountains began to develop a flat, decorative quality.

Lu Ghi-cheng was very proactive and pragmatic as an artist, having accomplished many remarkable achievements in Taiwan’s art history; for example, the MOUVE Artists’ Society was established in September 1937. Lu subsequently set up the Chingyun Art Society, participated in “Taiwan Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition” and “Tai-yang Art Exhibition,” served in the Department of Education and Provincial Museum, as well as being appointed as editor at the Taiwan Provincial Institute for Compilation and Translation, a member of the jury for the “Teachers’ Art Exhibition” and “Tai-yang Art Exhibition,” tutor at the National College of Art, etc. – overall more than a dozen positions, which showed his close involvement in Taiwan’s art movements. Although the Chingyun Art Society was not an organisation as large or complex as the Tai-yang Art Society, a complete archive maintained by Lu provided a significant resource of and insight into post-war Taiwanese art organisation and exhibition, funding and socio-economic circumstances, which was vital to the rebuilding of Taiwan’s art scene. In the early years during the Japanese colonial rule, Lu painted numerous portraits and female nudes. After the war Lu turned to focus on Taiwan’s mountainous landscape and became well known as ‘the painter of mountains’.