17 Facts About Hung Liu

Hung Liu was a Chinese-born American contemporary artist.

Hung Liu was predominantly a painter, but worked with mixed-media and site-specific installation and was one of the first artists from China to establish a career in the United States.

In 1970, two years after the beginning of China's Cultural Revolution, Hung Liu was sent to Huairou, a small village in the Beijing countryside, where she lived and worked among the local villagers from 1968 to 1972.

Hung Liu attended Beijing Teachers College in 1975 and studied mural painting as a graduate student at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

Since the late 1990s, Hung Liu has occasionally taken historical photographs of non-Chinese women, refugees, migrants, workers, and children as a point of departure.

Hung Liu disobeyed the ban against non-sanctioned art of the Maoist regime in her series called "My Secret Freedom".

Hung Liu is a class of 1986 alumna of the University of California, San Diego.

Hung Liu was inspired by a silk Chinese scroll painting from the 12th century, which depicts cranes symbolizing good luck.

Hung Liu painted the work with enamel in her signature style of allowing the paint to drip.

Hung Liu was born under the Maoist regime, and the influence of her environment growing up is evident in this particular work.

Hung Liu similarly has a birdcage extending from the canvas of the painting as well, showing that though she is in a position of power, she is still confined to the role of a woman of her time.

Hung Liu has received numerous awards, including two painting fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Joan Mitchell Fellowship.

Hung Liu was the Professor Emerita of Painting at Mills College in Oakland, California, where she taught from 1990 until retiring in 2014.

Hung Liu died from pancreatic cancer on 7 August 2021 in Oakland, California.

Hung Liu was in the process of developing an exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery before her death.

Hung Liu's work has appeared in exhibitions and venues including the following:.

An exhibition titled Hung Liu: Passers-by, scheduled for the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China, in 2019 was canceled by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture because of the content of some paintings.