Conversation, 1985

The Belgian artist, Pierre Alechinsky discovered Walasse Ting sleeping on boards in a tiny attic room and became his best friend. Walasse Ting was inspired by the “Expressionist” movement, as well as the many works of Picasso. He began as an abstract artist, but the bulk of his work since the mid 1970's has been described as popular “figuratism.” In the early 1940's Walasse Ting exhibited a few water colors at a local Hong Kong bookstore. However, he made his way to Paris and then to the West, where he struggled for six years before becoming noticed by the COBRA artistic group: Karel Appel, Asger Jorn and his friend Alechinsky. In the mid 1950's, Walasse Ting became involved in the “abstract expressionist” era, where he was befriended by Sam Francis. Ting had been previously noted for his bold strokes which were mainly poetic abstracts, like the renowned artist Zao Wouki. In the 1970's Ting developed his own distinctive style, using vivid acrylic paint within his Chinese calligraphic brushstrokes. Walasse Ting’s artistic works are filled with vitality and freshness, in his depictions of sensuous women, flowers, birds, fishes, various types of animals, and a wide array of flora and fauna. His art work is simply named, such as "Lady With Vase," "Busy Bodies," and "Cat In The Garden." Ting’s canvas paintings expressed his passion for the beauty of the natural world, which awarded him the Guggenheim Fellowship Award for Drawing. Walasse Ting was self-taught, but his artistic works can be found in the permanent collections of international museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, London's Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, and the Parisian and Hong Kong Museum of Art, as well as many others. After 20 years in New York, Walasse Ting moved to Amsterdam, which he said reminded him of Hangzhou's West Lake area. His exotic colorful abstracts are an inspiration of his experiences in Tahiti, like Gauguin. Ting suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2002 and passed away in 2010, in New York after he moved from the Netherlands.