About the Artist
Hsiao Chin
Hsiao Chin (b. 1935) is renowned for his vivid paintings of geometric forms in minimalist compositions. A cofounder of Ton-Fan Art Group—one of the first Chinese artist collectives dedicated to abstract art—Hsiao has spent more than five decades challenging the Eurocentric legacy of the genre. His work La forza Della meditazione (1964), which sold for $963,063 at auction in 2018, reflects the essence of Movimento Punto, another movement Hsiao founded in Milan in 1961; the avant-garde movement drew on Eastern spiritual philosophies of contemplation and calm, visualizing through a formal pictorial language individual connections with the universe. Hsiao spent much of his life in Europe. In 1956, he traveled to Spain, France, and Italy, all the while absorbing Western modernist traditions. He fused these with his study of Zen and Taoism to develop a singular style of abstract painting. The Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre in Latvia mounted a major retrospective of Hsiao in 2020 that emphasized the spiritual dimensions of his paintings.
