Artist's creative journey highlighted

In remembrance of Hsiung's perseverance in integrating East and West, the National Art Museum of China in Beijing is showing a selection of Hsiung's works in its collection The Journey of Defining Yourself through Jan 14. Several pieces donated by Yang and his wife Weng Fan are also displayed.

Hsiung's paintings, drawings, sculptures and calligraphic works, through which he sought to express his cultural identity at the crossroads of Eastern and Western cultures, helped define the Chinese cultural spirit.

Hsiung's father was Xiong Qinglai, a noted mathematician who studied in France for years. He headed the mathematics department of Tsinghua University in the late 1920s, where he met Yang Wuzhi, also a mathematician and father of Yang Zhenning. The two boys forged a friendship that spanned the decades and continents.

Hsiung's youth epitomizes the experience of his peers at home: Growing up in a time when his motherland was engulfed by poverty, social crisis and invasions. Hsiung chose economics when he enrolled to National Southwestern Associated University in 1939.

But Hsiung soon realized economics was not his cup of tea and transferred to study philosophy in his sophomore year. After graduation he joined the army to fight in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), and later became a translator for US military officers.

In 1947, Hsiung passed examinations to study in France on a government scholarship. Wu Guanzhong was another scholarship winner.

After a year of studying aesthetics at the University of Paris' philosophy department, Hsiung again transferred to the Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts to become Wu's schoolmate. He studied in the studios of several modern sculptors, including Marcel Gimond.