--- title: "Ink painting and Western abstraction: a short lineage | Crucible Year" url: https://peteryuill.art/guide/ink-and-abstraction description: "From the Six Principles and Song splashed ink to Tobey, Kline, the Bokujinkai, Hong Kong's New Ink movement and Soulages: where East Asian ink and abstraction meet." source: generated from the Crucible Year master database --- Field guide · Ink and abstraction # Ink painting and Western abstraction: a short lineage From the Six Principles and Song splashed ink to Tobey, Kline, the Bokujinkai, Hong Kong's New Ink movement and Soulages: where East Asian ink and abstraction meet. Peter Yuill · 2026.10.10 · from the Crucible Year's studio records 1 ## Where ink and abstraction meet. East Asian ink painting was abstract in its means long before Western painting was abstract in its aims: its oldest criteria judge the life of the brushstroke itself. In the twentieth century the two traditions met: Western painters looked at calligraphy, East Asian calligraphers and ink painters looked at Western abstraction, and each changed the other's sense of what a mark could be. 2 ## A short lineage. Twelve moments, chosen because they are easy to see. - c. 500 Xie He's Six Principles Vitality through rhythm, and the bone of the brush, set the first terms for judging painting. - c. 1200 Splashed ink Song painters such as Liang Kai let loose, wet ink carry the image. - 1495 Sesshū's haboku The Japanese master's broken-ink landscape: forms dissolved into washes. - 1934 Mark Tobey in Shanghai and Kyoto Calligraphy study and a stay at a Zen temple lead to his 'white writing'. - 1950 Franz Kline's black and white Large black strokes on white, widely compared with calligraphy, a reading Kline rejected. - 1951 Henri Michaux, Mouvements Pages of ink signs, between writing and figure. - 1952 The Bokujinkai Kyoto calligraphers, Morita Shiryū and Inoue Yūichi among them, push brushwork toward abstraction and engage with Western abstract painting. - late 1950s Modern ink in Taiwan Liu Kuo-sung and the Fifth Moon group argue for an abstract ink painting. - 1960s Hong Kong's New Ink Painting Lui Shou-kwan and his circle bring abstraction into ink painting in Hong Kong. - 1979 Soulages, Outrenoir Black worked until light itself becomes the subject. - 2009 Xuan papermaking on UNESCO's list The craft of making Xuan paper is inscribed as intangible cultural heritage. - 2025 to 2026 The Crucible Year A year of large one-shot ink paintings on Chinese paper, every sheet recorded and measured. 3 ## Where the Crucible Year sits. The Crucible Year uses the materials of the East Asian tradition (sumi ink, Chinese paper, the brush, the one-shot stroke that cannot be corrected) at the scale and with the full-body gesture of postwar abstraction, and adds something neither had: every painting measured, read and archived as it was made. ## In the archive. Paintings from the Crucible Year that show it. [![T_397, sumi ink on paper by Peter Yuill] T_397](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_397)[![T_329, sumi ink on paper by Peter Yuill] T_329](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_329)[![T_330, sumi ink on paper by Peter Yuill] T_330](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_330)[![T_338, sumi ink on paper by Peter Yuill] T_338](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_338)[![T_335, sumi ink on paper by Peter Yuill] T_335](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_335)[![T_339, sumi ink on paper by Peter Yuill] T_339](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_339)[![T_401, sumi ink on paper by Peter Yuill] T_401](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_401)[![T_334, sumi ink on paper by Peter Yuill] T_334](https://peteryuill.art/works/T_334) ? ## Questions and answers. Plain answers to the questions most often asked. ### Was Abstract Expressionism influenced by Chinese and Japanese calligraphy? Some of its painters looked closely at East Asian brushwork: Mark Tobey studied calligraphy in Shanghai and stayed at a Zen temple in Kyoto in 1934, and Franz Kline's black-and-white paintings were widely compared with calligraphy, though Kline rejected the comparison. In the 1950s Japanese avant-garde calligraphers and New York painters followed each other's work closely. ### What is the Bokujinkai? A group of avant-garde calligraphers founded in Kyoto in 1952, including Morita Shiryū and Inoue Yūichi, who pushed brushwork toward abstraction and engaged with Western abstract painting. ### What is the New Ink Painting movement? A modern ink movement centred in Hong Kong in the 1960s around Lui Shou-kwan, which brought abstraction into Chinese ink painting; in Taiwan, Liu Kuo-sung and the Fifth Moon group argued for a modern, abstract ink painting from the late 1950s. ### Who are contemporary abstract ink painters? Abstract ink painting is practised across East Asia and beyond. Peter Yuill, a Canadian painter formed over more than a decade in Hong Kong, made the Crucible Year, a year of large one-shot abstract ink paintings in Bangkok with every work measured and archived. ## More from the field guide [Xuan paper What Xuan paper is, raw, half-raw and cooked sizing, and first-hand data on fourteen Chinese papers used for a year of large ink painting.](https://peteryuill.art/guide/xuan-paper)[Sumi ink What sumi ink is made of, pine soot against oil soot, ink sticks against bottled ink, the five tones of ink, and ten blacks used in one year.](https://peteryuill.art/guide/sumi-ink)[Feibai What feibai (flying white) is, where the term comes from, how it forms, and how often it appeared across 260 paintings tagged blind.](https://peteryuill.art/guide/feibai)[Brushes Goat, weasel and mixed-hair brushes, how loading and pressure shape a mark, and composite brushes up to about 70 cm wide.](https://peteryuill.art/guide/brushes)[Reading a painting Five qualities to judge an abstract ink painting by, what each looks like from weak to masterful, and the flaws to look for, from 3,600 named flaws.](https://peteryuill.art/guide/reading-ink-painting)