FONG Chung-Ray (b. 1934, Nanyang, China) is a pioneering artist known for his contributions to Taiwanese art modernization. In 1949, he arrived in Taiwan as a soldier and later pursued his passion for art, graduating from the Political Staff College in 1954 with a degree in Fine Arts. In 1958, he co-founded the Four Seas Art Association alongside artist Hu Chichung. Three years later, he joined the influential Fifth Moon Group, shifting his focus from oil painting to the innovative exploration of ink. In the early 1970s, he was awarded a prestigious Rockefeller III Foundation fellowship, which allowed him to immerse himself in contemporary art movements across Europe and the United States. In 1975, Fong immigrated to the United States, eventually settling in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he continues to live and work today.
Fong's painting style, during the 1960s, was similar to the abstractionism in postwar America, and was typical of the modern style in the 1960s with his simplistic but vivid and powerful composition. During that period, he switched to oil brush, xuan paper and ink, returning to the traditional way of creation. He also invented a brush made out of fibers taken from the trunks of palm trees, which gave a rawer aspect to his tints of colors. After moving to the United States, his style moved into another phase; the characteristics of this period were influenced by calligraphy strokes and the study of Buddhism. He combined written characters and abstract composition, transforming Chinese characters into art. After 1989 he again opened up a new creative field: collage, in which he created texture by adding layers of colors. Fong Chung-Ray has always been strict to his own creation, loyal to his self-perception, and this way he conveys deep emotionality as well as rationality through art, carrying personal spiritual thinking and practice.
His selected solo exhibitions include: The Eternal Abstract: Fong Chung Ray Solo Exhibition (Asia Art Center, Taipei, 2017) and Solo Exhibition (National Museum of History, Taipei, 1974).
Fong Chung-Ray has participated in numerous significant group exhibitions, including the Four Seas Art Exhibition (1958–1961) and the Fifth Moon Group Exhibition (1961–1974). His works were featured in the Biennale de São Paulo in São Paulo in 1959 and 1963, Trends in 20th Century Chinese Painting at Stanford University Museum in 1968, and The Experimental Sixties: Avant-Garde Art in Taiwan at Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2003.
Other notable exhibitions include the Modern Water-Ink Painting Biennial Exhibition at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei (2007), 1960—The Origin of Taiwan's Modern Art at Asia Art Center (2016), FROM CHINA TO TAÏWAN. Pioneers of Abstraction (1955–1985) at Musée d'Ixelles (2017), and The Weight of Lightness: Ink Art at M+ at the West Kowloon Cultural District (2017). In recent years, his works have been featured in The Birth of Modernist Art Movement in Taiwan at the National Museum of History (2024), the trio exhibition The Longing for the Abstract: Chuang Che, Fong Chung-Ray, Yang Chihung at Asia Art Center (2022), Revisiting the Origin of Taiwan's Modern Art in the 1960s by Chu Weibor and Fong Chung-Ray, presented by Asia Art Center at Art Basel Hong Kong (2018), Crouching Talents: The Abstract Art of Eastern Origin at Asia Art Center, Beijing (2019), and Transgression throughout the Volatile World—Inaugural Exhibition of Asia Art Center Taipei New Flagship Space at Asia Art Center (2021). Fong's works are part of public collections at the Pompidou Centre and Musée Cernuschi in Paris, France, as well as the San Francisco International Airport and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the United States.