CHRONOLOGY

Pang Jiun is born on August 8th in Shanghai. His father, Pang Xunqin, who studied oil painting in Paris, had returned to Shanghai, where he organized the Storm Society (Juelanshe), a modern art group; his mother, Qiu Ti, who had studied oil painting in Tokyo, was one of China’s first-generation female oil painters.

In September, at the invitation of Li Youxing, Pang Xunqin accepts a teaching position at National Peiping Academy of Art (present-day China Central Academy of Fine Arts), and the family moves to Beijing.

After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, the Japanese army begins its encroachment of northern China, forcing the Pang family to leave Beiping for Shanghai in mid-July. Later, as Pang’s father changes jobs and the war continues, the family moves to various cities before settling in Pi County, Chengdu, where they remain until March 1946.

He paints his parents’ portraits and starts a series of watercolors.

He enters Huaxi Houba Elementary School in Chengdu. Later, after the victory over Japan, the family moves back to Shanghai, thus interrupting his studies. His education thereafter consists mainly of Tang and Song poetry and English, taught by his mother and tutors.

He completes his first album of ink and watercolor paintings. His father personally entitles it The Buds of Art.

In the summer, following his father’s appointment to a teaching position at Kwangtung Provincial Academy of Art, he moves to Guangzhou, but because the railroad tracks are damaged, the family has no choice but to stay temporarily in a small house at Lushan, Jiangxi, which they share with Fu Lei and his family. During the short time they lived here, Pang Jiun completes many scenic watercolors.

In October, the family settles in Guangxiao Temple, where Kwangtung Provincial Academy of Art is located, and is next door to the dean of the school’s Dept. of Music, the violinist Ma Sicong, who becomes Pang Jiun’s teacher. Although Pang studies the violin for only a few years, this lays the foundation for his musical appreciation and influences his later creative work.

At the age of 11 sui he begins to do plein-air oil painting. The more than thirty works he completed around this time are eventually destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

In April, he has his first joint exhibition with his sister Pang Dao at the Sun Yat-Sen Library in Guangzhou. His father paints the exhibition poster and submits an essay, “Exploring Children’s Education Through the Exhibition of Pang Dao and Pang Jiun,” for publication in The Great Light (Daguang bao). The exhibition attracts widespread attention in the newspapers and magazines, and the two children are praised as “child prodigies.”

In December, several members of the family—Pang Xunqin, Qiu Ti, Pang Dao, and Pang Jiun—hold a joint exhibition in Shanghai’s Yili Gallery.

In April, he and his sister Pang Dao holds their second joint exhibition in Shanghai’s Yili Gallery.

In October, he is admitted to the National College of Art in Hangzhou. Because he already has had three exhibitions, the college grants him special admission even though he is only 13 years old, making him the youngest university student at this time. He matriculates at the same time as Fang Zengxian, who will later become renowned for his ink paintings of human figures, and Yuan Yunfu, who will devote his energies to the field of public art. During his time here, he studies under masters like Ni Yide, Zhuang Ziman, and Yan Wenliang.

From November to February the following year, he participates in the land reform of Huaibei, Anhui Province.

Between January and February, because of his father’s new job, he transfers to the China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Here he studies under masters such as Xu Beihong, Wu Zuoren, and Luo Gongliu, and he receives French academic-style training in drawing. Since Qiu Ti does not want her son to leave school life too early, she meets with Academy President Xu Beihong to discuss letting Pang Jiun study for another year.

With Luo Gongliu and others, he applies for admission to the Academy of Arts of the Soviet Union. Although he is accepted, there is a problem with quotas, so he is sent instead to Czechoslovakia to study puppet shows. Unwilling to do that, he is later given the option to go to Moscow to study film art. However, Pang Jiun firmly holds to his oil painting ideals and turns down the opportunity to study abroad.

After graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Pang Jiun works as a creative artist for the Fine Arts Studio of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture, while at the same time he teaches courses on drawing and watercolor at the Beijing Mass Art Center. This continues until 1961.

His watercolor painting, The Twenty-four Room Villa of Beijing, is selected for inclusion in the First National Watercolor and Drawing Exhibition, and it is displayed from August 6 to 22 at Chengqian Palace in the Forbidden City. The same exhibition shows works by Lin Fengmian and Wu Guanzhong.

At the age of 20, he joins the China Artist Association and is listed as a “young painter.”

In conversation with Luo Gongliu, who had returned from study in the Soviet Union, he learns that Western critics were of the opinion that Chinese people were unsuited for doing oil painting, so he decides that he will never again do Chinese ink painting. He will paint only in oils.

In late July, when the Chinese Communist Party’s Anti-Rightist Campaign is in full swing, Pang Xunqin is falsely painted as a rightist. The health condition of Qiu Ti, who was hospitalized, deteriorates and she suffers heart failure. Pang Dao, a CCP member, is detained by the party for one year for observation and sent to labor reform in the countryside, but Pang Jiun, however, has his CCP probationary membership revoked.

The “gray tones” of his oil paintings are criticized as reflective of a dark personality, of one who has lost confidence in socialism. However, this catastrophe does not deter him from his pursuit of gray tones. Instead it prompts him to work even harder in the next decade on studying how to make gray tones more vivid than contrasting colors.

On April 8, Qiu Ti passes away at the age of 52 in Beijing Union Medical College Hospital. Because of the Anti-Rightist struggle, she cannot be laid to rest in a tomb, so Pang Jiun has no choice but to place her ashes for the time being in his home. Later on, these are placed for several years in Beijing’s Babaoshan columbarium, but Pang is then forced to have them buried in a nameless mass tomb deep in a mountainous area. Pang is thoroughly shamed by this but has no choice, and it becomes a source of lasting anguish.

The Beijing Bureau of Culture is downsized and merged into the Beijing Fine Arts Company, a cultural enterprise under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Culture, and its business consists mostly of exhibition layouts, the sale of reproductions of cultural objects, and other cultural activities. Pang Jiun is here engaged mainly in the creation of oil paintings.

He works for the Propaganda Department of the Ming Tombs Reservoir Worksite Headquarters, where he responsible for worksite propaganda.

In October, his paintings The Worksite Laundry Group, The Cultural Palace of Nationalities, and Peking Duck Farm are exhibited in the “Beijing Municipal Fine Art Exhibition Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China.” Of these, The Worksite Laundry Group, a large oil painting that shows the Ming Tombs Reservoir, is widely praised, and it is listed as the most popular painting in the exhibition according to a poll by the China Artists Association. The eminent Hong Kong ink painter Ren Zhenhan praises it by saying, “The composition is as beautiful as a piece of music.” Even Pang Xunqin, who always stays at home at this time because of the Anti-Rightist Campaign, goes to the Forbidden City to see it three or four times.

He joins the Artifacts Work Team, excavating the underground palaces of the Ming Tombs and executing paintings inside the tombs.

He travels to Taiyuan, Shanxi, to create a historical painting for the Liu Hulan Memorial Hall entitled Liu Hulan Visits the Poor.

The Beijing Fine Arts Co., intending to cultivate talent from within, recruits Pang Jiun and others to set up the Beijing Youth Fine Arts Academy, and he becomes the Head of Instruction. This school has several distinctive features: (1) it is semi-private and responsible for its own profits or losses; and (2) it looks only at applicants’ entering exam scores and is not particular about their political or family backgrounds, which goes against the contemporaneous practice of discriminating against the children of the “Five Black Categories.” However, because such administrative practices are not in line with government policy, it is ordered to dissolve in 1964. Even though the school is in existence for less than two years, the seeds planted during this time eventually blossom decades later, when many of the students become artists and establish residency in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Moreover, while running the school, Pang Jiun makes the acquaintance of the woman who later becomes his wife, Chi Hong.

He exchanges artistic ideas on painting with Li Kuchan, the master of sketch-conceptual bird-and-flower paintings. Li personally demonstrates his ink-splash technique and expresses his view that “the only oil painter with the same spirit of Chinese ink painting is Matisse.” This prompts Pang Jiun to begin thinking about the similarities and differences between “Chinese sketch-conceptual” and the Fauvists, and he aims to resolve the issue of convergence between Chinese and Western art through an exploration of aesthetic theory, thereby creating a distinctively Eastern style of oil painting.

In May, the Cultural Revolution begins. Approximately fifty important works, from his boyhood and all of his nude studies, are destroyed.

Deemed a “capitalist intellectual” and “revisionist,” he is sent down to do labor at a farm and an iron factory.

He marries Chi Hong on January 1st, Beijing.

Daughter Pang Yao is born in Beijing.

Paints in Xi’an and then Yan’an, where he creates a large landscape painting, Baotashan, Yan’an, which is now in the collection of the National Museum of China (formerly the National Museum of Chinese History).

He enters the steel refinery at Shijingshan, Beijing, despite the risk of being burned, to do paintings. In the evenings, he sits by the railroad tracks and uses the beams of passing coal train headlights to draw.

In September, he spends six days finishing The Lu Xun Residence.

Pang Jiun is one of the few artists who is able to do landscape paintings during the Cultural Revolution. He travels to various places to depict scenery at the behest of his work unit, and his completed works are then displayed in the Beijing galleries on Wangfujing Street, where they are frequently hung up in the morning and sold by the afternoon. This arrangement continues to the end of the 1970s. His 1977 painting in memory of Zhou Enlai, A Good Premier of the People, for the People Day and Night, is purchased by a Canadian.

Together with Cao Dali, Yan Zhenduo, and others, Pang travels to the Guangxi-Guilin region for more than a month to paint. During this time, at the request of the Guilin Cultural Bureau, the paintings are exhibited for internal viewing and exchange.

After returning to Beijing, Pang Jiun and Yan Zhenduo discuss the possibility of organizing a nonofficial exhibition. That year, from August 12th to 31st, they and Cao Dali, Wang Lu, and others hold a small exhibition of landscape paintings in the Working People’s Cultural Palace. It attracts a steady stream of visitors and garners enthusiastic responses.

In December, he is transferred to the Beijing Art Academy, where he works creatively to 1980.

In January, encouraged from the “Exhibition of Landscape Paintings,” Pang Jiun and others plan another, larger “New Year Art Exhibition,” which takes place at the waterside pavilion of Beijing’s Zhongshan Park. More than forty artists spanning three generations participate. Pang Jiun personally invites Jiang Feng to write the preface for the exhibition, which mentions there was no vetting process for the exhibition, the works may be bought and sold, and the artists should have the freedom to form their own associations. The stylistic boldness and the new ideas expressed in the preface attract many people to the exhibition, and a few even copy out the words of the preface at the site. The rippling aftereffects of the exhibition continue unabated, and the trends led by unofficial art groups such as the “Oil Painting Society” and “Stars Art Group” continue to this day.

In March, together with some of the participating artists of the “New Year Art Exhibition,” establishes the “Spring Tide Painting Society.” In April, the name of the group is changed to Beijing Oil Painting Society.

From October 14th to 30th, the “Second Exhibition of the Oil Painting Society, Beijing” is held at Painted Boat Studio in Beijing’s Beihai Park; Liu Xun writes the manifesto, “The Banner of Beauty.”

Together with stage designer Ma Yunhong, who had studied in the Soviet Union, and the worker artist Fu Yuan, Pang Jiun goes to organize seminars at Hunan Normal University in Changsha and Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, in order to promote the importance of unofficial movements in the fine arts.

With the assistance of his colleague at the Beijing Art Academy, Deng Lin, who is the daughter of Deng Xiaoping, he successfully applies for permission to visit family in Hong Kong. On the eve of departing from the Mainland, he has a candid talk with his father, who suggests that he continue using his “grey tonality” style.

In May, Pang Jiun, his wife, and daughter arrive in Hong Kong, and they begin their new lives with only HK$60. Unable to pay the deposit for renting an apartment or to find work, Pang Jiun contacts his childhood friend, the musician Fu Cong, who persuades a Hong Kong financial company to wire money to Pang Jiun, which temporarily resolves the family’s dire economic straits.

He has a solo exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. Of the 22 works displayed, nine are sold, which impresses the Hong Kong art world.

In April, he participates in the “Benson & Hedges Selection of Hong Kong Art” exhibition at Pao Sui Loong Galleries, Hong Kong Art Centre.

In October, he participates in the “Contemporary Hong Kong Biennial Exhibition 1981,” held in the Exhibition Hall in the Low Block of Hong Kong City Hall.

Through the recommendation of renowned architect Tao Ho, he takes a teaching position in the Dept. of Continuing and Professional Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he teaches until 1987.

Becomes manager of the Art Department at O. O. Enterprise, where he is in charge of oil painting exports until 1984.

He accepts a teaching position vacated by Chen Shou Soo, a renowned oil painter who had studied in Italy, in the Department of Music and Fine Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University, and he works there part-time in the University’s School of Continuing Education, teaching courses in drawing and watercolor, until 1987.

On March 18th, his father Pang Xunqin passes away at the age of 79.

In June, he has his first solo exhibition at Lungmen Art Gallery, Taipei.

In August, he leaves Hong Kong to settle in Taiwan. National Taiwan Academy of Arts is willing to hire him as an associate professor, but due to Ministry of Education regulations requiring three years’ teaching experience in Taiwan at the rank of lecturer or higher, he starts teaching at the rank of lecturer.

In March, he publishes his first book, Techniques for Oil Painting.

In February, the “Exhibition of Paintings by the Pang Family” is held at Lungmen Art Gallery, Taipei. Works by Pang Xunqin, Pang Dao, Lin Gang, Lin Yan, Pang Jiun, Chi Hong, and Pang Yao are shown.

In May, he is invited by the Taiwan Provincial Museum of Art to hold an “Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Pang Jiun.”

In October, his work, A Dancer’s Meditation, is collected by the Taiwan Provincial Museum of Art.

In August, his work, A Tai Girl, is collected by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts.

He passes review for professorial qualifications and becomes the only person that year to receive approval from the Ministry of Education to be promoted to professor of art.

In January, he establishes the Trans-Century Oil Painting Association.

In June, he publishes his second book, Discourse on Techniques for Drawing.

On December 26th, the Trans-Century Oil Painting Association holds its first exhibition at the Taipei County Cultural Center, and Pang Jiun’s Mother and Son is exhibited.

In November, he is hired as visiting professor in the Dept. of Art, Changshu Institute of Technology, a post he keeps until 2003.

In August, he publishes his third book, New Discourses on Techniques for Oil Painting.

In November, he accepts an invitation to serve as a juror for the Seventh National Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall Art Exhibition.

In March, at the invitation of the National Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, he holds an exhibition, “The Art of J. Pang,” in the Memorial Hall Galleries.

On October 18th, he participates in the Central Academy of Fine Art Fifty-year Alumni Exhibition, and during the seminar he shows his oil painting, Improvisation in Music, which is then collected by the CAFA Art Museum. On the 22nd, he speaks at the inaugural oil painting seminar of the Tsing Hua University School of Arts and Design, and he donates the work he shows, Color Composition in Music.

In December, he accepts an invitation to serve as consulting juror for the Third Exhibition of the National Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall.

In September, he has a solo exhibition, “Pang Jiun’s Art of 58 Years—New Eastern Expressionism,” at the Chan Liu Art Museum, Taipei.

On February 20th, in an accidental fall, he suffers an occlusive fracture of the radius bone in his left arm. On the 26th, he creates his first work after the injury, Broken Arm No. 1, and on the 28th, he completes a large still life oil painting, Broken Arm No. 2.

In August, he has a major exhibition of his oil paintings, “Pang Jiun at 70,” at GSR Gallery, Beijing.

In December, National Taiwan University of Arts hosts an exhibition celebrating his retirement and the results of his research: “Twenty Years at NTUA—Pang Jiun’s Colors, Lines, and Forms.”

In November, he is invited by Changshu Art Museum in Changshu, Jiangsu, to hold a solo exhibition, “The Art of Pang Jiun—Passion and Perspective.”

In November, “The Art of Pang Jiun,” is held at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

In December, “The Art of Pang Jiun” is held at the National Museum of History, Taipei.

From May to June, the Art Museum of Beijing Fine Art Academy holds a joint Pang family exhibition of works by Pang Xunqin, Qiu Ti, Chi Hong, and Pang Yao, “The Inheritance and Refinement of Art.”

For the first time, he visits his mother Qiu Ti’s home on the island Gulangyu in Xiamen. She had cherished the memory of her home before she passed away, and in this year he completes My Mother’s Last Memory (Gulangyu Island).

In November, at Shanghaimart, Shanghai, he has an exhibition, “If It’s Pretty as a Picture, It Isn’t—Pang Jiun’s Oil Paintings, 2012.”

Between February and March, the joint exhibition, "Welcoming Spring Festival," is held at Red Gold Fine Art, Taipei.

In August, he participates in “Sound of Nature: Landscape Oil Painting Invitational Exhibition 2013,” at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.

In October, Fine Art Asia in Hong Kong hosts "Oil Paintings of Pang Jiun."

From January to February, he has a solo exhibition, "Oil Paintings of Pang Jiun," at Chan Liu Art Museum, Taipei.

Between June and July, the exhibition, "Season of Grey: Oil Paintings by Pang Jiun," is held at Gallery by the Harbour, Hong Kong.

In October, he participates in the joint exhibition, “The Storm Society & Post-Storm Art Phenomenon: The Pang Family in Taiwan,” at ART TAIPEI.

In May, the exhibition, “Oriental Civilization: Pang Jiun Solo Exhibition in Venice,” takes place at Istituto Provinciale per l’Infanzia Santa Maria della Pietà.

In June, the exhibition “Pang Jiun: Expression of the East” takes place at The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo.

In October, ARTASIA in Taipei organizes “Eastern Civilization: Pang Jiun Solo Exhibition in Taipei” and “Impression of Venice: New Works by Pang Jiun.”

On October, Fine Art Asia in Hong Kong hosts "Pang Jiun: Art of Figure Drawing."

In November, ARTASIA in Taipei hosts “Pang Jiun at 80: A Retrospective of Major Works."

From January to May, he participates in the joint exhibition, "Fine Art Practices from 1972 to 1982 in Profile-A Beijing Perspective," at Inside-Out Mini Museum, Beijing.

In May, he is invited to hold a solo exhibition, “The Art of Pang Jiun,” at the Gallery of Chinese Profiles, Xiamen.

In July, his exhibition, “The Journey of a Promise—Oil Paintings by Pang Jiun,” is held at Exchange Square, Central, Hong Kong.

From March to April, the exhibition, “Pang Jiun: Nineteen New Works,” is held at Yan Gallery, Hong Kong.

Between October and November, he is Invited to exhibit in Influence: Contemporary Oil Paintings by Chinese Artists in Dongyi Art Museum, Beijing, with artists including Zhang Wenxin, Cao Dali, Wang Lu, Yan Zhenduo, Wang Huaiqing, Yang Gang, Zhang Hongnian, Ai Xuan, Yao Yuan, Shao Fei, Wang Yidong and Bai Yuping.