Walasse Ting

Walasse Ting 1928 Wuxi/Jiangsu (China) - 2010 New York The Chinese-American artist Walasse Ting was born on October 13, 1928 in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. From 1940, Walasse Ting studied art at the Art Academy in Shanghai before moving to Hong Kong in 1946. In 1952 Walasse Ting moved to Paris, where he came into contact with artists such as Pierre Alechinsky, Constant, Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, and others, and became a member of the artist group "CoBrA", which had already been founded in 1948. In 1958 Walasse Ting moves to New York. Here in New York, with abstract expressionism and Pop Art the most important art center from the 1950s on, Walasse Ting received manifold inspiration for his own artistic work, as he had already done in Paris. From the abstraction of the artist group "CoBrA" to figurative Pop Art, Walasse Ting's paintings and prints developed from black-and-white, gestural-abstract works to colorful figurative works in the style of American Pop Art, whereby he succeeded in uniting the Eastern, Asian conception of art with the Western one. His works include fine calligraphic drawings as well as large, luminous areas of color in acrylic. Due to the beautiful, pleasing impression and freshness of his works, poetic and highly decorative images of women, flowers or animals, Walasse Ting's works quickly enjoyed great popularity with the international public. In 1954 the Paul Facchetti Gallery in Paris organized Walasse Ting's first solo exhibition in Europe, followed by an exhibition at the Taptoe Gallery in Brussels in 1956. In 1959 the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York organized Walasse Ting's first solo exhibition in the USA. Numerous other gallery exhibitions in the U.S., Europe and Asia, here especially in Hong Kong and Taiwan, were to follow. Figurative artist and poet - publisher of the lithography portfolio "One Cent Life" Walasse Ting is not only a visual artist, but also a poet and publishes several volumes of poetry and artist books. In 1961, "My Shit and My Love" is published with ten of his poems as well as prints. In 1964 he is the editor, with Sam Francis, of the important large-format portfolio "One Cent Life" with 62 loose lithographs by 28 artists as well as poetry by Walasse Ting. Published by Eberhard W. Kornfeld in Bern, this collective portfolio brings together works of abstract expressionism, tachisme and pop art, and is considered probably the best known and most magnificent synthesis of the avant-garde art movements of the 1960s in Europe and the USA. Included are works by Asger Jorn, Pierre Alechinsky, Karel Appel, Enrico Bay, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Sam Francis, Mel Ramos, Walasse Ting, and others; the graphic design of Walasse Ting's poems in multicolored typography sets groundbreaking accents. With "Chinese Moonlight - 63 Poems by 33 Poets," Walasse Ting published in 1967 a collection of Chinese poems he had compiled, newly translated by him into English, which also contains four of his color lithographs. Decorative images of women, blossoms, or animals in fresh, lively color schemesWalasse Ting spends the rest of his life in the Western world; in 1974 he even becomes an American citizen. In the 1980s, in addition to his studio in New York, Walasse Ting set up another in Amsterdam, living and working alternately in New York and Amsterdam. With countless exhibitions of his works in galleries and museums, he celebrates international success and achieves great popularity with the public. Walasse Ting's works can be found in renowned collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Tate Gallery in London as well as the Museum of Art in Hong Kong. From 2002 onwards, Walasse Ting was hardly able to continue his artistic work due to a cerebral hemorrhage, and he died in New York on May 17, 2010. Six months after his death, the Fine Arts Museum in Taipei organized the first large-scale retrospective for Walasse Ting in 2011 with the exhibition "From Heroic Expression to Resplendent Color"