SHIY De-Jinn

A young man in a bathing suit reclines in a relaxed manner in profile: proportions slightly enlarged, contours firm, volumes modeled with restrained strokes; color is sparse. HSI’s hallmark deepening of the eye sockets sharpens the gaze, giving the figure a direct, vulnerable presence.
    SHIY studied at the Hangzhou National College of Art. In 1948, he left for Taiwan, partly to avoid an arranged marriage, and then began teaching at Chiayi High School. He later worked and traveled abroad from the 1960s. Through the 1950s–70s, he lived within a conservative society where being fully open about one’s sexuality was difficult, and he channeled that tension into portraits and studies of male bodies that carry desire without disguise. Same-sex marriage became legal in Taiwan in 2019; SHIY, who died in 1981, did not live to see it. The painting holds this distance and hope together: a clear, steady longing to be seen truthfully and to love without concealment.