Taiwan-born Lee Chun-Yi, who moved to Hong Kong as a child in 1970, graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he was mentored by Chinese ink master Liu Kuo-Sung. He later returned to his birth country and earned a Masters in Fine Arts from Tunghai University.
Chun-Yi’’s distinct and revolutionary style is credited to his non-traditional way of employing calligraphy — the artist creates his own chops by carving Chinese characters or symbols onto wood. With these hand-carved tools, Chun-Yi creates visual compositions, from landscapes to portraits, with dramatic photography-like end results. In 2016, one of his Mao triptychs sold for over USD72,000 at Christie’s Hong Kong.
Chun-Yi’s work is in the permanent collections of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Jiangsu and Qingdao Art Museums in China and more around the world.
