Chen-Kong Fang was born in 1931 in Tung Cheng, Anhui province, China, and migrated to Brazil in 1951. Fang’s paintings display his fresh and experimental outlook in art, and the way in which he honored the tradition of Chinese painting, especially its spiritual quality. They feature recurring elements such as house interior containing few objects; twisted branches and trees moved by the wind; theatrical compositions where things seem to be animated; plays with scale and framing that operate a subtle deformation in objects, endowing them with a lively and human character. Fang sought to capture the physiognomic and spiritual characteristics of things, revealing mysterious aspects of the subjects he painted.

As a teenager, Fang studied watercolor and sumi-ê – a technique from Chinese origin which combines ink painting and calligraphy. In the mid-1950s in São Paulo, he studied Western painting with Yoshiya Takaoka, a Japanese artist who had attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, in Paris. During his apprenticeship years, Fang was inclined to absorb references from Western painting’s realist and naturalist styles in his landscapes, portraits and still lifes. From the 1960s on, however, he began pursuing his own artistic path, and developed an original style rooted in aspects of Chinese art that became increasingly evident as he reached his maturity as a painter.

His first solo show took place in 1959 at the Clube dos Artistas Plásticos, in São Paulo, and throughout his career he had several other solo shows at venues such as Galeria Bonino, in Rio de Janeiro, and F. Konning Art Gallery, in Schleswig, Germany. His group exhibitions include his participation in the 10th Panorama da Arte Brasileira at MAM São Paulo (1978), as well as various exhibitions focusing on the work of Brazilian immigrant artists or artists of Asian origin, such as Exposição dos pintores nipo-brasileiros (1996); Takaoka e seus discípulos (1986); and Imigrantes nas artes plásticas de São Paulo (1976), all held at MASP, São Paulo, Brazil. In 2018 the Pinacoteca de São Paulo featured a group of works by Fang in a group show that also included works by Amadeo Lorenzato, Eleonore Koch and various contemporary artists. In 2024, his work was the subject of the solo show Chen Kong Fang: O refúgio, at the Tomie Ohtake Institute in São Paulo, as part of the Asian Diasporas exhibition program. In 2025, his work was featured in The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation, at M+ in Hong Kong.

Fang’s originality, together with the spiritual quality of his painting, earned the artist great prestige from important collectors, including Theon Spanudis, who organized the group show Arte Transcendente, in MAM São Paulo (1981), in which Fang took part. It was in this context, as part of Spanudis’ circle, that Fang’s work became part of collections such as those of MAM São Paulo and Museu de Arte Contemporânea da USP – MAC USP, Brazil, in the 1980s. His work is currently in several important private collections, as well as public collections such as the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil, M+, Hong Kong, among others.