Liu Kuo-Sung was born in 1932 in Anhui Province, China. He moved to Taiwan with the Kuomintang Government in 1949, and catalyzed the modernist art movement while bringing renewal to traditional Chinese painting. Liu incorporated Western art concepts and techniques into traditional painting, successfully placing ink painting on the path to modern innovation. For this, he has been called the 'father of modern Chinese ink painting.'

Liu's richly expressive artistic language, heavily influenced by Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist thinking, places great emphasis on the balance between man and nature. His mastery of color and texture set him apart from both tradition and his contemporaries working in ink. Liu often inscribes his paintings with a seal that reads "Painted by a North-South-East-Westerner," representing his challenge to divisions and categorizations such as "East" and "West," "Modern" and "Oriental." Such thinking has led Liu to constantly experiment with various techniques and abstract forms, to create an artistic sensibility that is at once Chinese and modern, an artistic realm in which he freely roams.