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Liu
Kang
Left: Mortal Kombat's Liu Kang; Right: The real life Liu Kang
We’ll
chalk this one up to wacky coincidence, but did you know that Liu Kang
isn’t just a longhaired martial artist in Mortal Kombat?
Yes, there actually is a real life Liu Kang in the annals of
history, and no he doesn’t know karate (at least as far as we can
tell). Actually, the Liu
Kang we’re going to talk about now was a prominent painter, hailing from Singapore in the 20th Century.
Kang spent much of his early career in several vistas around the world, as he honed his craft, ranging from Shanghai to Paris. Looking at his early works, especially those from the 1930s, |
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one can see that the post-impressionist movement must have heavily influenced him at the time, with paintings reminiscent of Van Gogh and Monet.
However, after the Second World War, Kang’s style shifted away from this, and he is credited with helping to create the Nanyang style. This approach to painting was founded by Kang and a handful of painters who emigrated from China to Singapore to escape the communist regime that Mao was starting there. What makes this style of painting unique is how it combined traditional Chinese ink and wash painting with what they learning in the art schools of |
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Paris, and portraying their local surroundings in the paintings’
subject matter. During the
1950s Kang and his associates spent quite some time in Bali, and as such
the region’s indigenous art also began to influence the Nanyang style.
A pair of paintings by Liu Kang: Artist and Model (1954, Left), and Life by the River (1975, Right)
Over his career, Kang also spent some time as the president of the Society of Chinese Artists, and was a founding member of the Singapore Art Society. Sadly, Liu Kang passed away in 2004 of natural causes at the age of 93. However, his works continue to draw art enthusiasts to galleries around the world.
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