Remembering Hung Liu, A Portraitist Who Memorialized The Invisible

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Hung Liu, Resident Alien, 1988. Oil on canvas. Collection of the San Jose Museum of Art, gift of the Lipman Family Foundation.





Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery



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Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery





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Hung Liu





John Janca/Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery



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John Janca/Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery





Hung Liu, Migrant Mother: Mealtime, 2016. Oil on canvas, based on a Depression-era photograph by Dorothea Lange. Collection of Michael Klein.





Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery



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Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery

The faces Liu paints are mostly those of Chinese peasants and prostitutes from historical photographs she’s taken or collected over the years, and Dust Bowl migrants inspired by Dorothea Lange’s Depression Era photographs.

«That is shocking in the National Portrait Gallery, to see that perspective, Moss said. «And therein lies her contribution to the history of portraiture.

In a 2005 KQED video profile, Liu explained how she approaches her subjects. «Somehow you need to make a connection with whatever your subject, she said, as she sketched the outlines of a painting depicting a Chinese peasant on a large canvas. «Because when you have a human figure in any photograph or painting, you always ask, you know, ‘who’s this?'





Hung Liu, Mission Girls 20, 2003. Oil on canvas. Castellano-Wood Family Collection.





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Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery

This courageous, quietly revolutionary artist’s deep sense of empathy springs from experience. Liu was born in the northeastern city of Changchun in 1948. When she was just a baby, the Communist authorities imprisoned her father, who was a captain in the nationalist army, and continued to dictate the terms of the educated young woman’s existence.

In 1968, during the Cultural Revolution, she was sent to work in the fields with other students, as part of a sweeping «reeducation program. Liu, who had enjoyed painting and drawing since she was little, spent her free moments sketching scenes of country life. But the art she was interested in making – even after she was allowed to resume her studies in Beijing four years later – didn’t exactly capture the revolutionary spirit.





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Hung Liu as a graduate student, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China. Reproduction after the original 1980 photograph.





Unknown photographer, courtesy of Hung Liu and Jeff Kelley/Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery



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Unknown photographer, courtesy of Hung Liu and Jeff Kelley/Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery





Hung Liu, Plowboy, 2020. Oil on canvas. Collection of Dr. Matthias Bolten and Mr. Matthias Bruecklmeier, courtesy Nancy Hoffman Gallery.





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Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery

With her art, Hung Liu insisted that we see those who might otherwise be invisible. As the first Asian American woman ever to get a solo retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, Liu elevates other artists of color in a similar way, said her friend and fellow artist Mildred Howard.

«Hung is one of those artists that was breaking those barriers so that people like me can be represented for what we do, Howard said. «She was one of the artists that helped us to get a place at the table.

Now, just as Liu devoted her career to memorializing others, others are doing the same for her. Art institutions on both coasts, such as the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the National Portrait Gallery, are planning memorials in the coming months.