桃園市美術館 Logo

Hwang Chyun-Ing (1920-2019), with an art name “You-ching (green again)” and a late-life art name “Elder of Panshan,” was born to a well-educated family in Guangchang, Jiangxi in China. He started to learn calligraphy when he was five and had kept practicing daily even when he was nearly a hundred. During the Chinese Civil War, Hwang Chyun-Ing took fourteen students to Taiwan and had humbly resided nearby the Taoyuan Confucius Temple for more than sixty years. He focused on self-cultivation and lived a simple and nonmaterialistic life. Hwang was deeply aware that “calligraphy contains vast wisdom and is an invaluable asset of human civilization.” Having dedicated himself to calligraphy education for years, he had been the instructor for more than twenty institutions at the same time to promote calligraphy.

This exhibition emphasizes Hwang Chyun-Ing’s art of calligraphy in his centenarian life based on his late works in the collection of the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts. There are four categories. “Love for Calligraphy” contains his transcription of famous works, texts of calligraphy theories, his expressive writing; “Diligence in Literature” shows his poetic texts; “Life by Panshan” displays his poetry on peaceful seclusion in his late-life; “Harmony of Mind” includes his transcriptions and writing of Confucian and Buddhist texts. Hwang Chyun-Ing was an advocate of the Confucian ideals of self-cultivation and ruling by virtuous conduct. His works contain his belief that "the idea speaks through calligraphy." The sentences he wrote allude to his transcendent wisdom and spiritual attitude through Confucian and Buddhist ideas. His autobiographical text expresses his heart for calligraphy:

  I grind ink and ink grinds me down. Nine decades pass in the blink of an eye. I scribble a few words when inspiration comes. In my daily practice, I adhere to leisurely. I spend my golden years devoid of ambition.

Hwang Chyun-Ing had a modest, polite, and upright personality. Just as one of his mottos, “One displays artistic content with technique, just like people are vessels that help to spread the Way; the Way, in turn, nourishes the world,” he educated virtues with calligraphy. For him, calligraphy is not only a technique but also a symbol of culture. It carries the culture and wisdom of the sages. Appreciating the works by Hwang Chyun-Ing is just like meeting the calligrapher and being moved by his spirit. His playful funeral words “What dying words can I have? I do not regret any deeds” created when he was 95 illustrates his satisfaction for achieving his life goal: to live in days of tranquility.

Hundreds of Hwang Chyun-Ing’s seal carvings are mostly gifted by his friends and students. This exhibition collects and displays 75 seal carvings he used in his late life. His twelve catalogs in his lifetime are also presented to demonstrate the development of his calligraphy style.

Curator
TSAI Chieh-Teng

Artist
Hwang Chyun-Ing