Li Yuan Chia

Chinese artist Li Yuan Chia lived in England, next to Hadrian’s Wall, for the last twenty-eight years of his life. The wall, built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to keep out the ‘Picts’ (Scots) is in Britain’s north west, and known for its naturally beautiful Lake District National Park. This ideal location formed a retreat for Li, a place where he could think, create and begin the construction of his Museum and Art Gallery (the LYC Museum and Art Gallery). He died of cancer at the Eden Vale Hospice in Cumbria’s Carlisle, in 1994, and is buried in Lanercost cemetery just below his renovated farm house in the small village of Banks.

Born in 1929, in Hsu village, near Lu Shan, Kwangsi Province, China, Li was the survivor of an adoption which went sour and, at the age of ten, was passed around orphanages and schools for children of bereaved Nationalist officer-families, eventually gaining an education at a special school for the children of Chang Kai-shek’s officers in China, and in 1949 moved to Taiwan with the retreating ‘Nationalist’ forces from China. Two years later (1951) Li was able to attend the art education department of Taipei Normal College for teacher-training, in Taiwan, from which he graduated in 1955.

The next few years saw Li exhibiting his artworks at the 4th Bienal de São Paulo, in Brazil (1957) alongside artists from the Taiwanese Tung fang/ Ton Fan hua hui (‘Eight Great Outlaws’ group) Painting Group, one of Taiwan’s most significant avant-garde movements, founded in 1956, and who later exhibited in New York’s Mi Chou Gallery in January, 1960. We are reminded that….

“Artists in this group included Chen Tao-ming (Chen Daoming, 陳道明), Ho Kan (Huo Gang, 霍剛) (original name Huo Xuegang, 霍學剛), Hsiao Chin (Xiao Qin, 萧蕭勤), Hsiao Ming-hsien (Xiao Mingxian, 蕭明賢) (original name Xiao Long, 蕭龍), Hsia Yang (夏陽) (original name, Hsia Zuxiang夏祖湘), Li Yuan-chia (Li Yuanjia, 李元佳), Ouyang Wen-yuan (歐陽文苑), and Wu Hao (吳昊) (original name Wu Shilu, 吳世祿). These eight core members were often referred to as “The Eight Bandits” (Ba da xiang ma, 八大響馬) because of their rejection of artistic convention and of academic training.”
(McIntyre, Sophie. "Eastern Art Group (Tung fang/ Ton Fan hua hui)." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. : Taylor and Francis, 2016.)

The ‘Point’ or the ‘Dot’ represents the beginning and the end, seen in the Taoist ‘Yin/Yang (Taijitu) symbol as a white dot (a seed of white) against a black field while simultaneously a black dot is seen as a seed of black against a white field. In Buddhism (as in Hinduism) the Bindu (point or dot) relates to the concept of Śakti (or power) and is also known as the Ajna Chakra, a point of awakening or the ‘Third Eye’, and is the point where creation begins as in the centre dot in the mandala where the dot represents the seed of the cosmos. Li’s meditative dots were a by-product of these transcendent spiritualities, and his belief in the control of mind over brush, rather than the utilisation of accident.

Li, when referring to his concept of the distillation of Chinese calligraphic cosmology into a single ‘Cosmic Point’, said ‘In 1959 my first painting was a tiny black dot on a white square of canvas – nothing could be simpler than that.’ In essence it was Li’s preparedness for an encounter with like minds in the Italian ‘Punto’ (Point) movement.

In 1961 Li visited his dear friend Hsiao Chin (from the Tung Fang group), and went on to found a fresh art movement with him - Milan’s ‘Movimento Punto’ (the Point, International Art Movement, 1961). The Punto group was the only art international art movement, at the time, influenced by Asian Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, and became home to Chinese artists Hsiao Chin, Li Yuan-Chia, Huo Gang, Italian artists Antonio Calderara and Dadamaino (Eduarda Emilia Maino), and Japanese artist Azuma Kenjiro.

Li arrived in Britain in 1965, for an exhibition of his work at ‘Signals’ in London, where had been invited by David Medalla and Paul Keeler to participate in  Soundings Two, an international survey of experimental art. Signals was founded in 1964 by artist David Medalla, Gustav Metzger and Marvello Salvadori, as an experimental gallery and a meeting place for young international artists including Mira Schendel, Heinz Mack, Lygia Clark, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Takis, Li Yuan Chia and others. A year later Li Yuan Chia exhibited in Signals 3 + 1, and stayed in Britain, with diversions to Spain visiting friends, until his death.

Since his death Li’s works have appeared in…..

Tate Modern: Display, London (2014)
'View-Point: A Retrospective Exhibition of Li-Yuan-chia,' Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2014)
'Li Yuan-chia,' Sotheby's S|2 Gallery, London (2017)
'Li Yuan-chia: Unique Photographs,' The Whitworth, Manchester, England, (2019)
The LYC Museum & Art Gallery and the Museum as Practice Conference, Manchester, (2019).