News Article by Lee Sheridan
SPRINGFIELD, MASS, DAILY NEWS
Chinese Watercolors
Mix Oriental, Western
By LEE SHERIDAN
The recently opened exhibit of Chinese watercolors by Tseng-Ying Pang at the Holyoke Museum, Wistariahurst, had its beginnings last May in New York City when Museum Director Mrs. Marie S. Quirk first became acquainted with the work of the artist at the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums. “When I saw an exhibit of Pang’s paintings at the Waldorf-Astoria I was quite impressed,” Mrs. Quirk said in a Daily News interview. She added that she had met the artist at the museums association meeting and made tentative plans with him, which culminated in the present exhibit.
Mrs. Quirk considers the work of Pang particularly unique since it brings Oriental feeling to western style techniques and approaches. Describing the paintings as “enchanting,” the museum director said that the watercolors on rice paper are “muted, subtle colors” and deal mostly with nature — ledges, boulders, mountains, plant forms, with “the suggestion of a little tree here and there.” Some paintings Mrs. Quirk said, are “ethereal,” some abstract but with delicate, calligraphic line tracery, some “most unusual” in that they are peopled with tiny figures. “It requires a bit of study to really see and appreciate the great amount of detail,” said Mrs. Quirk.
Although Pang was born in Tokyo he is of Chinese parents and unmistakably a Chinese artist the museum director explained, working in abstract shapes which, upon contemplation, assume precise patterns and personal realism.
Pang was privately educated in the traditional arts of calligraphy and painting in Peiping and studied Western painting at Chinghua Art College, where he graduated in 1937. After an assistant instructorship in art at the same college he was awarded a scholarship for study in Japan. Head of the art department of Hubsien College in Xian from 1941-44, the artist then taught in Taiwan until he came to the U. S. on a grant by the Asia Foundation in 1965.
Pang’s first one-man show in this country was in l954 at the Argent Gallery in New York City, while he was still in Taiwan. Since then he has had numerous New York City shows as well as in Detroit and has participated in more than 50 art association shows in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, including the Berkshire Art Association.