Taipei Period

Born in Guangxi in 1929, Li Yuan-chia came to Taiwan with the Nationalist government after World War II. He studied in the art department of Taipei Normal School and attended Li Chun-shan’s studio, where he was inspired by modern art concepts and began exploring abstract language. Together with peers, he co-founded the Ton-Fan Art Group in 1957, one of the ㄐmajor collectives in Taiwan’s early postwar modern art movement. Works from this period fuse Chinese ink traditions with the spirit of abstract expressionism. His free-flowing lines and open compositions carry a sense of fantasy and musical rhythm, reflecting influences from Kandinsky and Miró. The calligraphic quality of his lines echoes his contemporaneous calligraphy works, sometimes incorporating oracle bone script and pictographic symbols, embedding the natural world into abstract forms.