How Macau-based artist Mio Pang Fei stunned the art world with his Neo-Orientalist works

When Shanghai-born, Macau-based artist Mio Pang Fei (1936-2020) held his inaugural exhibition at the Luis de Camoes Museum in Macau in December 1985, his abstract canvases infused with Eastern philosophy sent ripples through the then-Portuguese colony. At the time, cross-pollination between Chinese ink art and Western abstraction had flourished for years in neighbouring Hong Kong, championed since the 1960s by Lui Shou-kwan and the New Ink Movement. At the same time, Paris-based masters such as...