Richard Lin valuation
Taiwanese-born British minimalist who spent a career refining what white can do.
Richard Lin was born at Taichung in Taiwan in 1933, studied architecture at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London, and stayed to paint.
What a work by Richard Lin is worth
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Bio
Richard Lin was born at Taichung in Taiwan in 1933, studied architecture at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London, and stayed to paint. From the early 1960s he worked almost entirely in white — relief paintings in which bands of white oil, aluminium, Perspex and bare canvas are separated by fine lines and slight changes of level, so the picture is read by its edges and its shadows. He showed with Gimpel Fils and then Marlborough, was included in documenta III in 1964, and later returned to Taiwan. He died in 2011.
The market is now driven principally from Taiwan and Hong Kong, where Lin has been substantially reassessed, with the white relief paintings of the 1960s well ahead of everything else. Condition is unusually decisive here: the works depend on an immaculate white surface and on crisp physical edges, and any discolouration, scuffing, or damage to the aluminium and Perspex elements is both highly visible and difficult to restore invisibly. Works on paper and etchings from the London years exist in modest numbers. Signature and date are normally on the reverse.
At a glance
- Born
- 31 January 1933, Muhō-shō
- Died
- 31 December 2011, Taichung
Gimpel Fils, documenta and the Carnegie
Lin graduated in architecture from the Regent Street Polytechnic in 1958 and turned to painting. His first solo exhibition was at Gimpel Fils in London in 1959, by which time he was already exhibiting as Richard Lin rather than Lin Show-yu, and he became a British subject in 1963.
At documenta III in Kassel in 1964 he showed three of his painting reliefs as one of the artists representing Britain, and he is described as the first Chinese artist to take part. At the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh in 1967 he shared the William Frew Memorial Purchase Award with Francis Bacon. He lived in Wales until the mid-1980s and then returned to Taiwan.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
