North American Taiwan Studies Association - Wisconsin Chapter (NATSA-WIC)
More about Chen Cheng-po’s activities in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Taiwan
1924–1929: Tokyo
In 1924, Chen Cheng-po, at the age of thirty, gave up his teaching post in Taiwan in order to study at the Tokyo School of Fine Art, the most distinguished institution for painters at his time. Chen Cheng-po left for Japan and started a whole new period of painting style influenced by Western techniques. Chen Cheng-po started to paint en plein air under the influence of French impressionism, which renders his painting the vibrancy of light and movement. In 1926, Chen Cheng-po’s painting, “Street of Chiayi,” was featured in the seventh Empire Art Exhibition of Japan. He was the first Taiwanese to enter the Empire Art Exhibition, the most prestigious official exhibition in Japan at that time.
1929–1933: Shanghai
In the summer of 1928, Chen Cheng-po visited China for the first time. He moved to Shanghai and taught at Xinhua Art College in the following year after graduating from Tokyo School of Fine Art. During his time in Shanghai, Chen was inspired by traditional Chinese ink paintings. Such an influence, hybridly toned by Chen’s previous training on Western oil paintings, was vividly represented in his works on Chinese scenic, historical sites. Besides the landscapes Chen also continued refining the female nude sketches that he had learned in Japan and created a series of nude paintings during this period. In 1933, due to the pressing tensions before the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese war, Chen left China and returned to his hometown, Chiayi, Taiwan.
1933–1947: Taiwan
Chen changed his direction as an artist after returning to Taiwan. His works in Taiwan are less relevant to the pursuit of the laurels of art exhibitions. Instead, he began to depict cultural subjects of his hometown, with an aspiration to reform the aesthetic education in Taiwanese society. In 1934, Chen Cheng-po founded the Tai-Yang Art Society with his fellow artists, and organized the very first Tai-Yang Art Exhibition in the following year. He also participated in initiating the Qingchen Fine Art Association (1940) and the Official Taiwan Art Society (1943), and served as as a consultant for local painting clubs. The subject matter in his oil painting during this period are Taiwanese landscape and street scenes.
Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945 marked the end of the colonial period of Taiwan and the beginning of the Chinese Nationalist establishment on the island. The political transition brought the Taiwanese people a new national identity at the price of confusions and ethnic conflicts. In February 27th, 1947, a Taiwanese tobacco vender was accidentally shot on the street by a governmental officer, igniting the widespread protest against the Nationalist authority throughout
the island. The ROC government, however, chose to violently suppress the protest with armed force. Thousands of civilians were killed beginning on February 28th. Chen Cheng-po, along with a few other local representatives, seeked to negotiate with the authority during the brutal suppression, only to be executed in front of the public on March 25th at Chiayi Train Station without an official sentence. Some of Chen’s works were lost since then while others were secretly preserved by his family. Not until the lift of the ROC martial law in 1987 did that Chen’s story and works have been uncovered and circulated again in Taiwan and across borders.