HUNG JUI LIN was born in Taipei City in 1912, in his family house on the Chuan-tou-HUNG Street in the Ta-dao-chen area along the Tanshui River bank. His father's long immersion in the traditional scholarly painting was the first benign influence on the young HUNG. In 1927, along with others like Chang Wan Chuan and Chen Te Wang, HUNG was admitted into the Taiwan Painting Research Institute funded by Ni Chiang Huai, and under the guidance of Kinichiro Ishikawa, began his professional training in sketching plaster statues. 1930 saw HUNG studying in Japan, where he later graduated from the Japan Imperial Fine Arts School. After returning to Taiwan in July 1938, HUNG found a job with the Jui-fang Coal Mining Company managed by Ni Chiang Huai. The working miners subsequently became a key inspiration for HUNG, who was thus able to secure his own distinctive style.
HUNG preferred to use simple, flowing yet rugged strokes to bring out the contours of his miners, the distinctive ambience of the underground mines, and the miners' weather-worn faces, as well as their dark, tightly-strung muscles. The powerful compassion for the toiling workers and the elderly, emanating from his works, never fail to touch the spectators.
The aboriginal people, nude girls and landscapes also figured in his paintings. After his retirement, the quest for sunlight obviously took the priority, when he moved to the US and painted a series of landscapes celebrating sunlight. Still, his pieces on the miners always remain his signature works.
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