1000 Museums

Hung Liu is a painter, more specifically a social realist and muralist. Born in 1848 in Changchun, China, Liu lived under the communist regime of Mao Zedong. In her early 20s, Liu worked for four years in rice and wheat fields during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. During the 1970s, she worked to receive her art and education degree and then began to teach. In 1984, Liu moved to the United States and began working at the University of California, San Diego. A lot of Liu’s art is inspired by (and sometimes incorporates) commercial studio photographs she found of female figures when she returned to China in 1991. Liu’s painting style blends western and Chinese artistic styles in order to explore the history, culture, identity, and collective memory of her homeland.