To document the artistic accomplishment of late Taiwanese artist Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波), an 18-volume collection of works, notes and letters by the artist was published in March this year.
An event was held on Mar. 23 to announce the completion of the "Chen Cheng-po Corpus (陳澄波全集)," which took 12 years to complete, published by Artist Publishing, and marketed by Institute of Taiwan History of Academia Sinica and Chen Cheng-po Cultural Foundation.
The event was attended by Minister of Culture Lee Yung-te, Mayor of Chiayi Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠), former Academia Sinica President Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠), director of the Chen Cheng-po Cultural Foundation Chen Li-po (陳立栢), and others.
Apart from Chen's works of oil, watercolor and glue color paintings, the collection also includes charcoal sketches, ink paintings, calligraphies, watercolor sketches, and historical materials such as photographs, postcards and letters. Each volume comes with an introduction, analysis and scholarly articles regarding the contents, it can be said as the most complete database of Chen’s works on paper.
Addressing the event, Minister Lee said the publication of "Chen Cheng-po Corpus" is an important milestone and contribution shared by the people of Taiwan and the world. He also said the life story of Chen is connected to the pulse of the turbulent times, "As far as I know, someone from the film industry is preparing to make a TV drama about Chen Cheng-po."
Minister Lee further added that MOC will fully support anyone who makes a movie based on Chen’s life story.
Born in 1895, Chen Cheng-po's oil painting "Outside Chiayi Street (嘉義街外)" was selected for the Imperial Fine Arts Academy Exhibition. He was the first Taiwanese painter to have obtained such an honor. In addition to creating artworks, Chen founded the Tai Yang Art Association and he was actively involved in promoting art by organizing art exhibitions annually.