Walasse Ting (1928-2010) Archives - Artcatto - Art Gallery in Algarve

Walasse Ting (1928-2010)

BIOGRAPHY

Ting was born in Wuxi, China, in 1928, but was raised in Shangai. He is a self-taught painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet, who began his life as an artist at a very young age. He left China in 1949 and settled in Paris for 6 years. Ting lived as a poor struggling artist but became acquainted with all the members of the avant-garde group called COBRA.

Ting arrived in New York in 1958 at the height of the Abstract Expressionist period. In New York he sold his work, bold dripping strokes featured in his paintings. Only in the 1970s did Ting developed is now distinctive style using calligraphic brushstrokes to define outlines and filling flat areas of colour with vivid paint. Like Gauguin, he often visited Tahiti in search of the exotic colours that he loved. His most common subjects contain women, cats, birds and peacocks.

Ting’s work are an unique blend of bright fluorescent colours infused by an appreciation for the sensory pleasure of the natural world. He has written many books of poetry, the foremost being Red Mouth, containing reproductions of 428 paintings and 33 black and white drawings.

Walasse Ting was presented with the Guggenheim Fellowship Award for Drawing in 1970. His public collections include MOMA, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; National Gallery of Chicago, Chicago; Tate Museum, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hong Kong Museum of Art; among many others.

After suffering a severe brain hemorrhage in 2002 he was no longer able to continue his artistic career. Ting died on May 17, 2010, at the age of 80 in New York.