In celebration of Women’s Day, Alisan Fine Arts is excited to present the works of iconic woman artist Fang Zhaoling. This one day event organized specially for Southside Saturday, introduces the audience to her landscape paintings from the 1970’s to the late 1990’s.  

Artist Biography    

Born to a scholarly family in the city of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, China in 1914, Fang Zhaoling was a precocious child with strong interests in Chinese calligraphy. She studied bird-and-flower painting under Chen Jiucun and landscape painting under Qian Songyan while at Wuxi Art College. When she was nineteen, she participated in the “White Wave Art Society” exhibition in Wuxi. Her talent and knowledge of Chinese ink art were evident even at a young age. By 1950, she had immigrated to Hong Kong and was a student of Zhao Shao’ang, a leading proponent of the second generation of the Lingnan School. Under his guidance, she produced primarily bird-and-flower paintings. By 1953, she had become a student of the renowned painter Zhang Daqian, canonical artist of twentieth century Chinese ink painting. During the 1960s, she studied paintings by Wu Changshuo and Qi Baishi in great detail, learning to use their freestyle method of cursive calligraphy to create paintings. During the 1960s-70s she joined Zhang in Brazil and California, painting with him and participating in several overseas exhibitions. She passed away in 2006.

Alisan Fine Arts has been representing Fang since the 1990s and held a solo exhibition for her Fang Zhaoling: Vigorous and Fresh Chinese Ink Painting in 2012 and published catalogue. We also have included her work in numerous group exhibitions, such as Uniquely Hong Kong: A Celebration of Hong Kong Art (2020), Brushing Nature, Ink Asia (2019), the charity exhibition HOPE (2018), DESIRING- Post 97 Hong Kong Ink Art (2017), Alisan Fine Arts 35 Years (2016), Hong Kong Pavilion, Masterpiece London Fair (2013), Kaleidoscope: A Group Show of Contemporary Hong Kong Art (2001).  

Since 1951, Fang has had over fifty group and solo exhibitions, including important shows at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford University; Cambridge University; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; Tokyo Fuji Art Museum; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Shanghai Art Museum; Zhejiang West Lake Art Museum; University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Museum of Art.    

In 2014 to celebrate her centennial, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University held a solo exhibition of her works. Recently exhibitions for Fang include Painting Her Way: The Ink Art of Fang Zhaoling, Asia Society Hong Kong (2017), Women in Art: Hong Kong, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK (2019), and Ordinary to Extraordinary: Stories of the Museum, Hong Kong Museum of Art (2019).   

Her work is present in important international collections, including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, USA; British Museum; V&A Museum, UK; Cologne Museum of Art, Germany; Shanghai Art Museum; Jiangsu Art Museum, China; Hong Kong Museum of Art; University Museum and Art Gallery, the University of Hong Kong.   

To maintain better social distancing and in case of last-minute changes, we kindly ask you to RSVP [email protected].

Please note that Alisan Aberdeen will be by appointment only starting 1 March 2021