Hon Chew Hee

Hon Chew Hee (1906 – 1993) was a Hawaiian-born American muralist, watercolorist and printmaker.

Early life and education

Hon Chew Hee was born in 1906, in Kahului, Maui, Territory of Hawaii (now Hawaii, U.S.). His father Jackson Hee had moved from China to Hawaii at age 19 in 1885, when he joined Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Party. Hon Chew Hee grew up in China, where he received his early training in Chinese brush painting.

Hee returned to the United States in 1920 at age 14 in order to further his training at the San Francisco Art Institute. He also studied in New York City at the Art Students League of New York, at Columbia University, and spent three years in Paris in the 1950s studying with Fernand Léger and Andre Lhote. He was especially greatly influenced by the art of Jean Arp.

For the remainder of his life, he lived in Kaneohe, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. He died in 1993, at Castle Hospital.

Hee completed six murals for the Hawaii State Foundation on 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 other murals were painted for Manoa Library, Enchanted Lake Elementary School, Pukalani Elementary School, and Mililani Library. He also produced entirely abstract works, such as Sunrise Koolau in the collection 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 among the public collections holding works by Hon Chew Hee.