Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Zhuang Zhe (born 1934) is the son of Zhuang Yan (1899-1980), curator of paintings in the National Palace Museum. The family moved to Taiwan in 1948 and Zhuang graduated from the Art Department of the National Taiwan Normal University in 1958. He was a member of the Fifth Moon Group with Liu Guosong (born 1932). Among the Fifth Moon Group artists who were seeking a new Chinese painting responsive to the challenge of Western modernism, Zhuang’s use of Chinese ink in abstract form was particularly powerful and expressive. Zhuang later became head of the Department of Art and Architecture at Donghai University. Michael Sullivan (1916-2013) acquired this painting from Zhuang’s exhibition in 2001 at the Han Art Contemporary Gallery, Montreal, Canada. Zhuang wrote to Michael that this is one of a group of paintings inspired by his recent visit to Anshun, a remote and backward town in western Guizhou province, where during the Second World War (1939-1945) treasures from the Palace Museum were stored in caves under the care of the museum staff, headed by his father, Zhuang Yan.