One of the most significant artistic currents of the 20th century was Modernism, with abstract art emerging as its most distinctive form. Since the 1870s, when Impressionism initiated the decomposition and reconstruction of the external world, art gradually moved toward abstraction. Over the course of a century, this evolution culminated in color-field painting and minimalist expression, completing a journey from complexity to simplicity, from the external world to the inner mind. At its core, abstract art represents the pursuit of essence beyond appearance.

The spread of abstraction from Europe and America to the rest of the world was not only propelled by the dominance of Western culture, but also by the dislocations of two world wars and the alienation inherent in modern capitalist society, which drove people to seek new spiritual anchors in art. In the mid-20th century, the Chinese Civil War made Taiwan a refuge amid turmoil. Artists such as Chu Teh-Chun, Liu Kuo-Sung, and Hsiao Chin settled there, while Richard Lin moved from Taiwan to Hong Kong due to the unrest. As outsiders in foreign cultures, these artists sought paths for life and creation through art, while also contributing an Eastern perspective to the global art discourse.

The experience of being unmoored—“alien to the people, alien to the land, alien to the language”—allowed the surge of inner emotion and poetic sensibility to pour naturally into their work. Chu Teh-Chun went to France, Richard Lin settled in the UK, Hsiao Chin was active in Italy, and Liu Kuo-Sung developed his practice in the United States. Though geographically dispersed, they all drew upon Chinese cultural roots, particularly the philosophies of Laozi and Zhuangzi and Chan (Zen) Buddhism, which became both spiritual home and creative foundation. In this convergence, Eastern metaphysical thought collided with Western modernist formal exploration, giving rise to a distinctively dynamic form of abstraction.

The works of these four artists reveal the diverse manifestations of East-West aesthetic dialogue: Chu Teh-Chun’s luminous lyricism, Lin Shou-Yu’s minimalist purity, Liu Guo-Song’s innovation in ink, and Hsiao Chin’s expansive spiritual cosmos. Their creations represent not only a path of artistic innovation but also an abstract journey across geography and culture, from the inner self to the global stage.