#tang chang

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Untitled by Tang Chang, 1978 (outer signs ปืน means 'gun' and inner sign ป่า means 'forest')

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Chang Sae Tang / จ่าง แซ่ตั้ง / Tang Chang, b. 1934, d. 1990 Self Portrait Thailand (1970) [Source]

Chang Sae Tang is one of Thailand's foremost poets and painters. Born of Chinese parents, he had very little formal education.

Chang is a selftrained artist. He taught himself the art of drawing and made a living by becoming a portrait artist. He first drew portraits with charcoal in black and white. Two of his early portraits were a portrait of King Chulalongkorn and portrait of King Anandamahidol. Both were done is 1959 and were drawn from photographs. Chang also studied from nature as well as reading works by several Chinese philosophers.

His abstract paintings executed around late 1950s and early 1960s were highly expressive. Unlike other Thai abstract artist whose work followed Western style, Chang's abstract works stemmed from his deep rooted Chinese background. He discovered his own origin through the influences of Chinese calligraphy and philosophy. His abstract work in colours were rich with swirling lines and became alive with bold colours that excited the viewers visually and psychologically. His abstract series include Black on Black and White on White , Chang was also a poet. His poems were highly conceptual, imaginative and acquired an intellectual aura.

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Tang Chang / Chang Sae Tang, b. 1934, d. 1990 14 October Thailand (1973) Oil on canvas Tang Chang Private Museum Photo by myself; open source

My Art Guides says:

Tang Chang is recognised as an important figure of Thai modern art, while not fully integrated in the national cannon, perhaps due to his Chinese descent and his explicit embracing of his origins. His prolific body of work ranges from informal gestural abstract painting to expressionist portraiture, as well as extensive poetry- drawing. The clear recognition of calligraphy in the materiality of his large-scale canvases translates a gesture of violence and angst. His work is marked by the years following anti- Chinese violence and the poetry-drawings should be read on the background of the 1970s student uprisings and crackdown by the military regime. In this context, informed by nationalism and a conservative outlook in artistic production, Tang Chang’s paintings were double outcasts, for being too international abstract and for being too Chinese.