Yu Cheng-Yao（余承堯）

Yu Cheng-Yao (February 28, 1898 – April 4, 1993), born Yu Shun with the courtesy name Cheng-Yao, was a native of Yangshang Township, Yongchun County, Fujian. In 1920, he went to Japan, where he studied economics at Waseda University before transferring to the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in Tokyo. After returning to China, he taught tactics at the Whampoa Military Academy, retired with the rank of lieutenant general in 1946, and came to Taiwan in 1949, the year the Nationalist government relocated there. Having spent the first half of his life in the military and in business, he did not take up painting until the age of 56, earning him the title “the General Painter.” Self-taught and taking nature as his only teacher, he built up rock textures and dense mountain structures with fine, tightly woven brushstrokes. Shaped by his travels across China’s mountains and rivers in his early years, his ink paintings carry a grand, lofty spirit and a style entirely his own, securing him an important place in modern Asian ink painting. His major exhibitions include his first overseas solo exhibition, at the Chinese Cultural Center in New York in 1977; his first solo exhibition in Taiwan, held at the age of 88 at Hsiung Shih Gallery in Taipei in 1986; a solo exhibition at Hong Kong City Hall in 1987; Yu Cheng-Yao at Ninety: A Retrospective at the National Museum of History in Taipei in 1988; and A Heart-warming Glance: Calligraphy and Paintings by Yu Cheng-Yao at the National Museum of History in 2015.