PROVENANCE:
Dimensions Art Center, Taipei
Private collection, Asia

Looking back on the artist's long career, we find that he completed his first abstract painting on paper in 1955, titled Abstract. Hsiao felt that his creative career truly began with that painting. Following Li Chun-shan's didactic approach, he discarded the idea of slavishly following any one artistic genre or school, and instead began to explore the basic elements of painting. At first glance, the influences of the European painters Miro and Klee appear to be obvious, but many critics find his style to be suffused with his own distinctive structural characteristics, in particular the black calligraphic lines reminiscent of Zhou dynasty stone inscriptions, blurry at the edges where the color is allowed to seep outwards a bit, generating all the tension and sense of movement associated with calligraphic strokes. The overall impression is that the static state of the image, frozen in time, yet allows for unlimited expression. This is one of the trademarks of Hsiao’s style.