Hoo Mojong (1924–2012) was an outstanding Chinese female artist, a key figure of 20th-century Asian modernism, and an important bridge connecting Eastern and Western artistic languages.

Hoo Mojong was born in Shanghai in 1924. In her early 20s, she left her hometown and began living abroad. She resided successively in Taiwan, São Paulo in Brazil, and Spain, before settling in Paris in 1965. There, she worked as a painter and printmaker for thirty-seven years, gaining wide recognition in Europe. From the 1990s onward, her artistic activities gradually returned to mainland China. Hoo Mojong passed away in Shanghai in 2012 at the age of eighty-eight.

Hoo’s practice spans oil painting, printmaking, colorful ink painting, and gouache. Her life abroad, marked by long-term migration and diasporic experience, infused her work with a multicultural sensibility. Hoo’s subjects include everyday objects, scenes of daily life, and female figures imbued with a sense of self-projection. Her pictorial backgrounds are frequently reduced to an extreme, or intentionally left out altogether, so that still-life forms emerge with an independent and striking presence amid large color planes and carefully balanced compositions. Through this restrained, quiet, yet subtly playful approach, Hoo Mojong’s works afford viewers a visual experience that combines simplicity with an underlying sense of tension.

Hoo Mojong has presented solo exhibitions at art institutions around the world, including Asia Society Hong Kong Center (2025); China Art Museum, Shanghai (2024); Today Art Museum, Beijing (2012); Ningbo Art Museum (2012); Shanghai Art Museum (2011); the National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2007); and Shenzhen Art Museum (2004). Her work is held in prominent public collections including the National Library of France, the French Ministry of Culture, the National Art Museum of China, Taiwan Mountain Art Museum, and Shanghai Art Museum.