Shanghai-born local painter Mio Pang Fei passed away on Friday aged 84, Rádio Macau/TDM reported on Saturday, quoting a source close to the bereaved family.
Mio was born in Shanghai in 1936 and moved to Macau in 1982 where he became well-known among fellow artists and art lovers, in the local Portuguese community in particular.
According to a text on the website of Creative Macau/Centre for Creative Industries, Mio was an admirer of Miro, Tapies, Dubuffet, Wols, Arshile Gorky, Pollock and De Koonig. According to the unsigned text, Mio “masterfully reconciled material and abstract informalism with the recuperation of primitive Chinese mural art. His neo-figurist and abstract-expressionist works are topographically rugged and violently aggressive in gesture and colour, the impulsiveness of which is emphasised by graffiti, carved by knife or applied with brush and oil-pastel. In this troubled and human art, one can’t but feel the fluidity of colour, revealing a curious and surprising osmosis between this Chinese artist and the influence of the West.”
Rádio Macau described his style was “neo-Orientalism”.
In 2015, Mio was selected by the Macau Art Museum (MAM) to represent Macau at the 56th Venice Biennale.
Rádio Macau said that due to ill health Mio stopped painting in the past decade and focused on Chinese calligraphy instead.
Undated file photo of Mio Pang Fei from http://www.miopangfei.com/
