Hung Tung (Chinese: 洪通; pinyin: Hóng Tong; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Âng-thong) was a Taiwanese painter who was notable for his folk style and vivid colours.
In 1976, Hung Tung's first major solo exhibition was organised by The Artist magazine at the American Cultural Centre in Taipei, making him a household name overnight in Taiwan.
Hung Tung's paintings suffuse strange beings, coloured faces, flowers, birds, trees, boats and airplanes with hieroglyphic symbols.
By incorporating dynamic pictographic symbols, he develops a unique personal language, which, full of magic and illusions that convey the fantastic power of popular belief, shows a lack of concern for western realism.
Hung Tung works show how the greatest significance of the Nativist movement was not the just the emergence of home-spun artist, but the widespread concern for using abstract means to explore local themes rooted in the immediate environment to re-evaluate modernist thought.
[3] Ultimately, Hung Tung's contribution extended not only to the birth of the Nativist art movement but was also important in redefining conceptions of the ‘local’ Taiwanese identity.
Yet other than a feature story in Raw Vision Magazine (issue #48) and a few other minor mentions in books and periodicals, Tung's work is almost unknown in the West.