Huang Xiangling, the daughter of late Taiwanese master painter Huang Junbi (1898-1991), says she is fulfilling her father's lifelong wish by holding a special exhibition at the Guan Shanyue Art Museum in Shenzhen.

The exhibition, which will end July 29, comprises more than 100 Chinese paintings and calligraphic works by Huang Junbi, showcasing his artistic achievements from the 1930s through the late 1980s.

This is the first time Huang's works are being exhibited on the Chinese mainland since he died in Taiwan in 1991.

"Despite his bad health in his late years, my father wished very much to bring his best works back to the mainland and run a large retrospective exhibition in his hometown," said Huang Xiangling.

However, due to political issues and other reasons, Huang's wish could not be fulfilled when he was alive.

Through a student of Huang Junbi in Hong Kong, Huang Xiangling got to know Wang Xiaoming, curator of Guan Shanyue Art Museum, and visited Wong at the beginning of this year.

Wang offered to hold a commemorative art exhibition for Huang Junbi as a key part of Guan Shanyue Art Museum's 10th anniversary celebrations.

At the opening ceremony of the exhibition on June 26, Huang Xiangling donated one of her father's landscape paintings, completed in 1970, to the permanent collection of Guan Shanyue Art Museum.

"As China's first special economic zone, Shenzhen is also an important part of Guangdong Province where my father's hometown is," said Huang Xiangling, who is a painter herself and also chief of the Cross-Straits Art and Cultural Exchange Association of Huang Junbi.

"As the first leg of Huang Junbi's touring exhibitions on the mainland, Shenzhen is now of special significance for both my father and me," she said.

Born in Guangzhou in 1898, Huang Junbi left the mainland and moved to Taiwan in 1949. He soon became an acclaimed painter and exerted a great deal of influence on the art scene in the island province.

During his lifetime, Huang Junbi, Pu Xinyu, and Zhang Daqian were known as the "Three Masters Accross the Straits."

As the founder of the fine arts department of "National" Taiwan Normal University, Huang was also the private tutor of Soong Mei-ling, wife of the former Taiwan leader Chiang Kai-shek.

"I was born of my father's second wife when he was more than 60 years old," said Huang Xiangling. "Despite the big age gap between my father and me, we had formed a special, deep, loving relationship since I was a child."

"For me, my father was always like a huge, great and affectionate mountain and I was always shrouded in the warmth of his love," she said.

Huang said the first important legacy of her father was his philosophy of being modest.

"During his life, my father remained modest and caring to all his friends, students, and servants, and I never saw him criticizing anybody but only saw him praising others for their strengths," Huang recalled.

"My father's modesty had made a great impact on my character since I was a child, and I've learned from him how to remain modest in many situations in my own life," she said.

Huang said the second significant legacy her father left her was his philosophy of hard work.

"I'd never seen such a hardworking old man in the world as my father, who seemed to be never able to stop painting all his life," Huang said.

Huang said she still remembers seeing her father's hand painting imaginary pictures on the sheet as he lay in a hospital bed in Taipei in 1991, a week before he passed away.

"My father often told me one would fall behind if he stopped painting even for one day, so I could always see him keep painting, reading, and watching other artists’ paintings to broaden his view of world," Huang said.

Huang believed the biggest legacy her father left her was the art of painting in a very natural way.

"My father knew painting was one of the toughest careers in the world and he even wished I would not follow him and get involved in painting," Huang said. "But since my childhood, I had been watching my father painting and listening to him commenting on how to paint," she said.

"My only regret now is that he hadn't made strict training demands on me when he was alive, but only let me freely develop my talents and skills in painting," Huang said.

Huang said the tougher obstacle facing her career was the challenge of coming out of her father's shadow and blazing her own trail. "For me, my father's paintings are like the sun, which sends off strong shines and leaves no room for me to hide in," said Huang, who has been thinking of creating her own unique painting style.

Huang said her father's greatest achievement was that he had formed a style of his own after learning from both tradition and nature.

"My father started learning landscape paintings from copying model paintings from the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, and continued to learn from Mother Nature, and finally established his own identity in the long history of Chinese landscape painting," she said.

Although Huang has admitted the influence of the Lingnan School, one of the modern schools of Chinese brush painting, in her father's painting, she said she doesn't agree with art critics and historians in China and abroad who classify her father only as a representative artist or leader of the Lingnan School in Taiwan.

"My father has formed his own distinct style in using brush, ink and color, although the flavor of the Lingnan can be vaguely found in some of his paintings," Huang said.

Huang said her father's unique style could be found in his peculiar way of painting clouds and waterfalls.

"In my father's paintings, clouds were always painted not only as misty and hazy, but also always with movement in a certain direction," Huang said.

"The waterfalls were also totally different from those stiff ones in traditional landscape paintings because of water movement and rhythm," she added.

Huang said she is planning to take the exhibition to Shanghai and Beijing at the end of this run.

(Shenzhen Daily July 5, 2007)