Fifth Moon Group


The Fifth Moon Group, also known as the Fifth Moon Art Group, is a group of Chinese artists who pioneered the modern art movement in post-war Taiwan between the mid-1950s and the 1970s. Members of the group were born in Mainland China and later migrated to Taiwan. The heyday of the group came during the 1960s–70s, coinciding with the period of the Great Cultural Revolution in Mainland China. The Fifth Moon Group is closely related to and usually associated with the Eastern Painting Group in membership, artistic works, and exhibitions.

Formation

The idea of the Fifth Moon Group came about as an answer to the group of friends’ growing discontent with the conservative and lackluster art scene in Taiwan. During their first three years of National Taiwan Normal University, the would-be members of the Fifth Moon Group visited the annual Taiwan Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition and found the award-winning artworks to be poorly made and lacking in both diversity and variety. In their fourth year, the group attempted to participate, but they did not get accepted into the exhibition. Motivated by the incident, the group decided to hold their own exhibition; later, they received support from their university tutor.
In May 1957, the Fifth Moon Group was officially founded by a group of painters who were graduates from the Art Department at the National Taiwan Normal University. The leading figure of the group was Liu Kuo-sung, and other core members included Chuang Tse, Feng Chung-jui, Kuo Tung-Jung, Li Fang-Chih, Kuo Yu-Lun, Chen Jing-Rong, and Ku Fu-Sheng. They were subsequently joined by other artists, including Chen Ting-shi and Han Hsiang-Ning.

Development

Artistic style

Since their emergence, members of the Fifth Moon Group have been reputed to be pioneers who modernized Chinese paintings and revolutionized the Taiwanese art scene.
While artists in the West had been developing and experimenting with new styles since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, artists in China were still largely working in the style of social realism. Many were constrained by the pressure of traditional styles, and very few were able to produce works that could be considered modern. The Fifth Moon Group's emergence and works helped to pitch Chinese painting into the 20th century. Since the 1960s, the group became the pioneering art society in Taiwan, using the new modern style as their visual manifesto. The group's iconic style is a hybridization of bold brushstrokes of Eastern calligraphy tradition and the shapes and colors of Western aesthetics, characterized by an innovative representation of freedom, conceptualization, and format of painting.

Members

The founding members of the Fifth Moon Group include:
Chuang Tse, Feng Chung-jui, Kuo Tung-Jung, Li Fang-Chih, Kuo Yu-Lun, Chen Jing-Rong, and Ku Fu-Sheng, and they were subsequently joined by other artists including Chen Ting-shi and Han Hsiang-ning.
Other members of the group include:
When Liu Kuo-sung went to the United States in 1966, he invited Margaret Chang to join the Fifth Moon Group's exhibition. During the 1970s, she participated in many exhibitions of the group.