- Name: 洪瑞麟
- Born: May 7, 1912
- Died: Dec. 3, 1996
- Birthplace: Taipei
- Did You Know That …?
- Hung was fascinated by the glowing sun and the transient nature of clouds. When he spent his later years in California's Redondo Beach, the city's sunny demeanor was a major source of inspiration.
Though his son once described him as "an average Joe," there was nothing ordinary about Hung Rui-lin and the way he approached life as an artist. Through his portrayals of the daily life in the dark and clamorous world of Taiwan's coal mines, the people who worked and died in the dust live on through his art. Although these were Hung's most famous pieces, he was also a skilled portrait artist who painted self-portraits, indigenous residents of Orchid Island, and the colorful characters he came across.
Known for offering a window into the heart of the mining world, Hung spent 35 years working at a mining field in Ruifang, a suburban district of eastern New Taipei City, before becoming an art lecturer in 1964.
The Dadaocheng-born artist showed an interest in painting from an early age, and in 1927, aged 15, he enrolled in a private art institute in Taiwan funded by the renowned painter Ni Chiang-huai (倪蔣懷). Three years later, he traveled to Japan for advanced studies at Tokyo-based Teikoku Art School, now known as Musashino Art University.
In 1938, Hung started to work for Ruifang Coal Mining Company, and the miners were his most fertile source of subject matter. Attracted by their resilience and humanity, Hung documented the ordinary life for the half-forgotten, fast-vanishing industry in one painting after another. Even in his last piece, from 1996, the painter turned the spotlight on their hard lives and work in his unpretentiously realistic painting style.
1938 was the also the year Hung teamed up with fellow artists, including Chang Wan-chung (張萬傳), Chen Te-wang (陳德旺), and Chen Chun-de (陳春德), to launch Cercle MOUVE (MOUVE行動美術學會), a new art association that sought to differentiate itself from the established Tai-Yang Art Association (台陽美術協會). In the 1940s and 1950s, Hung mainly used pencils, watercolors, and rice paper to create his artworks.
Introduced by Li Mei-shu (李梅樹), who was one of the first artists in Taiwan to adopt Western painting techniques, Hung began to teach at National Taiwan Academy of Arts in 1964. The institution is now called National Taiwan University of Arts. Hung settled in California's Redondo Beach in 1980 and lived there until his death in 1996.
Over the decades of Hung's artistic career, he largely chronicled life below ground — a rare topic for an artist of his generation.
Hung Chun-hsiung (洪鈞雄), the artist's eldest son, said his father did not have a grand plan to chronicle the lives of the people he worked with at first. He just did what he enjoyed and happened to document people who made a contribution to Taiwan through their labor.
While Hung Rui-lin is known as one of the most celebrated artists of his time and a magnificent chronicler of the industrial landscape in which he lived and worked, his eldest son offered an insight into the artist’s psychology. "My dad was an ordinary person who led a normal life. He didn't want to make a fortune by selling his works," the younger Hung recalled.