HO KAN’S ENCOUNTER WITH VANNI SCHEIWILLER AND THE ITALIAN NEO-AVANT-GARDE

With his abstract oeuvre Ho Kan has seamlessly straddled different cultures—Eastern and Western. Active since the 1950s, Ho Kan experienced the burgeoning avant-garde scene of postwar Taiwan, making work that was initially inspired by Surrealism. In 1964, he left Taipei for Europe and settled in Milan, where he developed a more starkly abstract style of painting, which continues to be his primary focus. In 2024, Ho Kan returns to his hometown Nanjing, China, along with a large retrospective of h

Ho Kan’s cultural references were not limited to calligraphy, as he was also inspired by Eastern spirituality. Hence, the decision to simplify forms and use a minimum of colours in his works echo Zen Buddhism and Taoism, which both advocate simplicity via a minimal use of colors and forms.

As one of the most representative artists in the modern painting movement in Taiwan in the 1960s, Ho Kan’s artistic career seems to have only undergone one transformative change.

His work, with its refinement, sense of intellectual play and universal appeal, is strikingly alive and historically significant.

Their oeuvres are not merely representations of their individual artistic journeys but also rays of radiance in post-war Asian art history that are worth revisiting again and again.

The elements in my work include “space,” “point,” “circle,” and “triangle.”