With his ancestral roots in Zhongshan County, Guangdong (now Zhongshan City and Zhuhai City in Guangdong), Hsiao Chin was born in 1935 in Shanghai. In 1949, he went to Taiwan with his uncle and aunt. In 1956, he left for Spain to study painting. In the same year, he co-founded the Ton-Fan Group, the first art group in the Chinese-speaking world to promote abstract art. Hsiao Chin spent over forty years in Italy and New York, dedicated to painting and teaching. He returned to Taiwan in 1996 and taught at Tainan Arts College (now Tainan National University of the Arts) until his retirement in 2005, at which time he was appointed Professor Emeritus. In the same year, he was conferred the honorable title of "Knight of Italian Solidarity Star" by the Italian President.
Hsiao Chin was among the generation of artists who first promoted the avant-garde art movement in China in the 1950s. He was also the first artist in Europe dedicated in the communication of Eastern and Western art. His works are deeply rooted in philosophical musings from Taoist and Zen origins. By combining elements of different cultures and with his experience in modern art, Hsiao has achieved a status of spiritual fulfillment through his direct expression of the self. For Hsiao Chin, the artworks are not as much the ultimate goal as a medium through which he can explore the meanings of life, discover a man's inner potential and experience the truth of being one with nature. As a successful artist, Hsiao Chin's achievement lies not only in his contribution to the promotion and progress of Taiwan's modern art movement, but more significantly, he has successfully inaugurated new expressions and possibilities for traditional Chinese ideas and elements, which was crucial to the modernization of art in China. In addition, in the international avant-garde world, he has offered unprecedented and unique perspectives coming from an artist of the East.
However, most meaningful of all is that he has shown us, through art, the extraordinary reflections of a sensitive mind in a lonely journey through life. It is a gem for all mankind to understand and cherish.