Liao Chi-chun (1902-1976) was born into a farming family in the village of Fengyuan. In 1926, while Taiwan was a colony of Japan, he graduated from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. After returning to Taiwan, this Western-style painter became active in art circles. He also began to stand out even before the age of 30, and his works were often selected for entry and award in such major government exhibitions as the Taiten (Taiwan Exhibition) and Teiten (Imperial Exhibition). To learn and be with other artists, Liao and other Taiwanese friends formed such influential art groups as the Ch'ih-tao Club and the T'ai-yang Fine Arts Association. After Taiwan returned to Chinese rule at the end of World War II, Liao Chi-chun moved to Taipei, where he worked tirelessly as an artist in his spare time from teaching--a painting-in-progress was on his easel even up to the time of his death. In life, Liao Chi-chun was a simple and straightforward man, but his paintings reveal a dazzling use of colors for an unexpected sense of freedom and unrestraint. Due to his educational background, his style was mostly closely associated with that of post-Impressionist and Fauvist style painters. However, his sensitivity to and control of colors made his painting stand out. Indeed, he was a true master of colors. Though he often rendered the same subject over and over, such as scenery at Tamsui and Taipei New Park (now the 2-28 Park), he continually experimented with varying intensities and patches of color that interact to create a spark of energy that makes each work come alive. In the 1960s, after being invited to visit Europe and America, he came under the influence of the abstract expressionist movement and experimented with abstracting forms into almost geometricized surfaces composed of lines and dots in which forms and colors become the focus of expression. His work "Forest at Night" is an ideal example of such. In his later years, he returned to the world of identifiable objects and scenery, but his use of colors was even richer and more mature. Such developments also took place in his still life paintings. This year marks the hundredth anniversary of Liao Chi-chun's birth. To commemorate this important Western-style painter in Taiwan, the National Palace Museum has borrowed 23 oil paintings and 16 sketches from the collection of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and from Liao's relatives in order to portray the spectrum of his long career in art. Through the works in this exhibition, the National Palace Museum hopes that visitors will come away with a sense of Liao Chi-chun's extraordinary mastery of color and his passion for life and art.