于大成   Yu, Da-Cheng   1934~2001

Da-Cheng Yu was born in Zhangqiu city, Shandong province, China, in 1934. His grandfather, who had passed the imperial examination at the county level in the Qing Dynasty, imparted literacy skills and rudimentary knowledge of The Four Books from a tender age. The artist sat at the feet of Ding-Shan Chen after becoming an adult. Yu’s early artworks followed Chen’s creative style, yet his unique approach made them sui generis entities. The artist firstly modeled his calligraphy upon Xi-Zhi Wang, Xian-Zhi Wang and Zhen-Qing Yan, and later treated Fu Mi, who was congenial to him, as the point of departure to develop his own calligraphic style. Having graduated from the Department of Chinese Literature, National Taiwan University, Yu earned his Ph.D. in Chinese Literature in 1970. He taught as a professor and served as the chairman of the Chinese literature department and was the dean of liberal arts colleges in several universities in Taiwan, and thus had disciples all over the country. Yu built up a great reputation in the field of Chinese literature. None of his contemporaries could match him when it comes to bibliography, documentation science, textual criticism, as well as calligraphy and monographs on the history of calligraphy. Xin-Xiong Chen, a late sinologist who was a professor at National Taiwan Normal University, eulogized Yu by quoting the words that An-Shih Wang said in praise of Shih Su: “what an extraordinary talent that only glows every one hundred years!” Yu enjoyed an unrivaled academic reputation at all times. What made him more admirable was that he converted to holding the brush with his left hand after suffering a stroke, and his calligraphy remained vigorous and firm in style. In terms of ink painting, he developed his own distinctive style on the basis of the Four Masters of the Yuan Dynasty. He was proficient in Peking opera in which he played old men such as Kongming Zhuge, Xuan Qiao, and Su Lu. He was also a Chinese chess master who authored several influential books, including A Miscellany of the Chess World and The Pre-emptive Method.