Ng Kwu Hung and Lobert Law – Their Modernistic
pieces were preserved as precious fine-art heritages
By
Vincent LEE Kwun-leung
Art Officer, Art Of Nature International Company Limited
Chinese-ink landscape painting by Ng Kwu Hung
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Watercolor painting by Lobert Law
Ng Kwu Hung (吳孤鴻, 1918 – 2008) and Lobert Law (羅拔, 1923 – 2011)
were renowned among the acquaintances in the fine-art academia as the two
significant masters to promote Modernism. They continuously explored a SinoWestern aesthetic crossover to further construct a unique painting style for Hong
Kong. Both Ng Kwu Hung and Lobert Law had ever been titled as Honorable
Chairmen in the Hong Kong Artists Society ( 香 港 畫 家 聯 會 ). Ng and Law
devoted their entire lives to a minimal mode of studio-art pursuit, recruit potential
talents and nurture their apprentices as distinguished painters by offering them
with various exhibition opportunities and exchange experiences.
Ng Kwu Hung brought up the creative trend of “Hong Kong Modern
Chinese Ink” independently, but he still reminded himself to correspond with Lu
Shoukun (呂壽琨)’s longsighted mission in reforming the connoisseurship norms
of Chinese painting art. Ng Kwu Hung upheld a lofty manner of landscape
description, as he adopted bright pigments to softly describe the atmospheric
transformations and conveyed audiences with illusionary visions. He never
intended for a tensed distribution of traditional textural strokes to make audiences
comprehend the mountainous structures. Rather, he allowed both himself and his
apprentices to fabricate a bunch of “colorful regiments” without compositional
restraints. Ng Kwu Hung regarded “Expressionism”, in which Wassily Kandinsky
initially adopted for blurring the realistic compositions and respecting the use of
“eye-catching” color combinations, as an essential doctrine for making Chinese
fine arts conciliate with the “neo-image culture” of this information-oriented
epoch.
For sure, Ng Kwu Hung did not abandon the idea of “literati leisure”
inherited by Huang Gongwang (黃公望), Wang Meng (王蒙), Ni Zan (倪瓚) and
Wu Zhen (吳鎮) in the Yuan Dynasty; as he strived for his very best to include
this kind of self-expressiveness in his painting approaches. Under a circumstance
that we accomplished Gu Kaizhi (顧愷之)’s avocation called “portraying the vivid
essences with reference to the noumenon of forms” (以形寫神), Ng Kwu Hung
encouraged both himself and his peer painting enthusiasts to invent new methods
of color infiltrations and brushstroke manifestations with “hydraulic pigments” as
major substances. The Western mode of watercolor and pastel techniques can be
alternatively applied to guarantee Chinese-ink paintings with expressionistic
effects. And so, it directly encouraged the Chinese-ink artists to pursue field trips
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for developing life paintings based on a subconscious observation on the invisible
soul of our Nature.
In 1978, Ng Kwu Hung, being an Honorable Chairman of Hong Kong
Artists Society, was invited as one of the 28 participating artists in “Hong Kong
Master Artist Joint Exhibition” (香港前輩藝術家展). Up to his 68-year-old age, it
was recorded that the Hong Kong Museum of Art (香港藝術館) has collected
more than eight pieces of Ng Kwu-hung’s Modern Chinese-ink paintings. Ng Kwu
Hung donated all his last testaments to the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals (東華三
院). To commemorate his contributions in the fine-art academia, the Tung Wah
Group of Hospitals employed a Hong Kong renowned sculptor to create a bronze
statue for Ng Kwu Hung. Ng’s statue is permanently installed in the Assembly
Hall of Lee Siu Chung Memorial Building (李兆忠紀念大樓禮堂). The Hong
Kong Artists Society will curate “A Posthumous Exhibition of Ng Kwu Hung’s
Chinese-Ink Paintings” (吳孤鴻水墨遺作展) at the Exhibition Gallery of Hong
Kong Central Library (香港中央圖書館展覽館) from 12 to 23 March 2012.
Lobert Law, who established Hong Kong Professional School of Fine Arts
(香港美術專科學校) in 1952, brought up the creative trend of “Hong Kong
Modern Watercolor Painting”. He absorbed the Taoist thought called “inaction
and self-autonomy” (無為自主) and the Buddhist thought called “immaculate
mentality” ( 無 染 ) to transform watercolor aesthetics as being much more
approachable to the need of Oriental connoisseurship. Lobert Law pursuit on
watercolor and oil painting was much affected by Mr. Zhou Gongli (周公理先生)
and Mr. Li Tiefu (李鐵夫先生) respectively. These two masters made Lobert
understand that, artists with Chinese origins were qualified as being capable
enough to create influential oil-painting pieces and compete with the European
master-artists for more museum and exhibition opportunities if they could always
bear in mind with the reformative spirits of Lingnan art pursuit. Between 1938 and
1940, Lobert Law studied at Wah Yan College, Kowloon (九龍華仁書院), and
received legitimate Catholic education. However, Lobert’s academic prospect was
suspended due to the turbulent political circumstances in the Second SinoJapanese War. Between the warrior period and the restoration period, Lobert Law
worked as a technical apprentice in Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation (九廣
鐵路公司). Later on, Lobert Law got an opportunity that the Kowloon-Canton
Railway Corporation sent him to the United Kingdom and received technical
trainings for two years. Lobert could thus appreciate distinguished oil paintings in
various art museums and think about an applicable method to search for a SinoWestern aesthetic coexistence in his future painting styles. After returning to Hong
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Kong, Lobert Law concentrated on maturating the institutions of local fine-art
tutorship.
From Lobert Law’s pieces, a sophisticated sense of “localization” is
perceived due to his heartfelt concern on the diminishing episodes of primitive
Hong Kong landscapes. By organizing field trips for the members of Hong Kong
Artists Society, more local artists and art lovers could comprehend the obvious
changes in New Territories, Wong Tai Sin, Central, Western District and so forth.
Being noted by the trend of New Town Development and Urban Renewal in the
1990s, Lobert recorded the most naturalistic scenes of the aforementioned
locations with his leisurely brushwork and lofty pigments. He conveyed people to
respect the fundamental vitality of the ecological sights in Hong Kong, as these
also represented the collective memories of our previous generations apart from a
prior appreciation on the iconographical beauty of skyscrapers and other types of
commercial infrastructures.
To conclude, the Hong Kong Artists Society eternally respects Ng Kwu
Hung and Lobert Law for their contributions in reviving Hong Kong painting as a
unique but the most precious asset among various types of Oriental fine arts. Ng
Kwu Hung and Lobert Law forbore the marine culture due to their connections
with the Western schools of artistic thoughts, whereas they made reference the
wholesome cultural elements from other Asian countries to solidify the role of
Hong Kong art as the only sort of “legitimate medium” to inherit the genuine
spirits of Sinology (i.e. the most fundamental version of Chinese culture) once the
local artists witnessed that the Mainland art circuit encountered a disastrous mode
of cultural ruins during the turbulent period of Cultural Revolution.
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