1929-2010
Walasse Ting began his career as an abstract artist, drawing inspiration from the Expressionists as well as Picasso. Since the 1970s, his work has generally been described as a kind of “figuratism”. He started exhibiting watercolours at a bookstore in Hong Kong in the 1940s, and moved to Paris shortly afterwards. After meeting the group known as COBRA, which included Asger Jorn, Karel Appel, and Pierre Alechinsky, Ting found a reputation as an abstract expressionist, using bold strokes in his compositions. During the 1970s, Ting developed a calligraphic style in his use of acrylic paint. Often, his work since this period has depicted birds and fish, flowers and animals. He also frequently depicts sensuous women. The titles of his pieces are distinctively simple, such as ‘Busy Bodies’ or ‘Lady with Vase’. He earned a Guggenheim Fellowship Award for Drawing in 1970. He taught himself to draw and paint, and his work appears in the permanent collections of many art museums around the world, including Tate Modern n London and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Ting lived in New York for 20 years before moving to Amsterdam. In 2002, he had a brain haemorrhage. He moved back to New York before he died in 2010.
