Hon Chew Hee

Hon Chew Hee (1906 – 1993) was an American muralist, watercolorist and printmaker who was born in Kahului, on the Hawaiian island of Maui in 1906. He grew in the works in China, where he expected his in the future training in Chinese brush painting. He returned to the United States in 1920 at age 14 in order to supplementary his training at the San Francisco Art Institute, receiving that school's highest academic honor. He subsequently taught in China until heartwarming to Hawaii in 1935. In Hawaii, he worked as a freelance artiste and held classes in both Western and Eastern styles of painting. Together behind Isami Doi (1903–1965), Hee taught painting classes at the YMCA. At this time, Doi instructed the young performer in woodcarving techniques and Hee, like his master, created wood engravings drawn from the rural excitement in the Islands. Hee after that founded the Hawaii Watercolor and Serigraph Society.

Hon Chew Hee moreover studied in New York at the Art Students League, at Columbia University, and spent three years in Paris in the 1950s studying behind Fernand Léger and Andre Lhote. He was especially greatly influenced by the art of Jean Arp.

From 1932 to the dawn of World War II, Hee lived in San Francisco, where he founded the Chinese Art Association. For the remainder of his life, he lived in Kaneohe, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where he died in 1993.

Hee completed six murals for the Hawaii State Foundation upon Culture and the Arts, the best known of which are The History of Medicine in Hilo Hospital and the murals that greet departing travelers at the Inter-island Terminal of Honolulu International Airport. His supplementary murals were painted for Manoa Library, Enchanted Lake Elementary School, Pukalani Elementary School, and Mililani Library. He plus produced agreed abstract works, such as Sunrise Koolau in the growth of the Hawaii State Art Museum. The Hawaii State Art Museum, the Hawaii State Capitol, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the National Taiwan Museum and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Missouri) and are along with the public collections holding works by Hon Chew Hee.