FISH

LUIS CHAN (CHEN FUSHAN, PANAMA/CHINA, 1905-1995) FISH Scroll, mounted and framed, ink and color on paper 27 ¾ x 52 3/8 in. (70.5 x 133 cm.) Signed, with three seals of the artist PROVENANCE Formerly the property of the Dr. K. S. Lo Collection SPECIALIST’S NOTES Luis Chan was born in Panama and moved to Hong Kong in 1910. He spent his early days working as a typist in a law firm and designing fonts for a ferry boat company. A self-taught artist who painted in his spare time, Chan’s passion eventually led him to learn western painting techniques through a correspondence course from the Press Art School in London. Nicknamed the King of Watercolor, Chan’s early style in the late 1920s manifests his superb skill in the medium and his liking of painting landscape based on his encounter with contemporary British landscape works. By the mid-1960s, Chan’s style transformed completely as a result of his experimentation with Surrealist automatist method. His paintings are imaginative dreamlike scenarios filled with strange creatures and different kinds of fishes. Chan’s artistic language does not concern so much with being western or eastern, but rather he emphasized the imagination brought to his works. Chan’s paintings are often presented in a spectrum of kaleidoscopic range of fantastical colors, teeming with childlike whimsy.