Hung Liu

In this video we take a look at Chinese born artist, Hung Liu, as she gets ready for a show in New York at the Steinbaum Krauss Gallery. Most of her pieces consist of social realism paintings, done from photographs. Liu also likes to address the objectivity and oppression of women throughout Chinese history in her art.

In 1966, Hung Liu was in high school getting ready to go to college when Mao's Cultural Revolution began. She was forced to leave her home to work in the rice fields as part of Mao's Cultural Revolution re-education effort. It was during this time that Liu started sketching and photographing the farmers and their families. Her artistic ability didn't go unnoticed and she was sometimes asked to do propaganda pieces. In fact, her first public showing was a propaganda piece.

After the schools were reopened, Liu got to pursue her formal art training at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Contrary to what most might think, she was not trained in the traditional Chinese ways, but rather in the Academy's official style which was Russian socialist realism.

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