Tseng Yu-ho

Tseng Yu-ho (; 1924/1925–2017) was a Chinese-born American art historian, visual artist, curator, and educator. She taught at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and was a curator at the Honolulu Academy of Arts (now Honolulu Museum of Art). She is also known as Betty Ecke, Tseng Yuho, and Betty Tseng Yu-Ho Ecke.

Early life and family Tseng Yu-ho was born either in 1924 or 1925 in Peking, China. When she recovered, she began studying painting with the chief Manchu House representative prince Pu Jin.

She graduated from Fu-jen University (now Fu Jen Catholic University) in 1942, and then pursued graduate studies in Chinese art history and Chinese literature at Fu-jen University and Peking University.

Yu-ho married German-born art historian Gustav Ecke in 1945. She had been one of his students at Peking University.

Career Yu-ho started receiving international recognition in 1946, when Michael Sullivan began praising and writing about her work. The Eckes moved to Honolulu in 1949, where Yu-ho earned a master's degree from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and was the curator of Asian Art at the Honolulu Academy of Arts from 1950 to 1963. Yu-ho had a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center in 1959. In 1972, she received a PhD in Asian art history from New York University Institute of Fine Arts.

She taught Chinese Art History at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa from the 1970s to 1986.

Yu-ho was one of the founding members of the Society of Asian Art of Hawaii. She started developing her "Dsui Hua" paintings in the early 1950s which would later become her signature style. Her work would later become more abstract but would still keep a connection to the classical Chinese canon.

Selected publications

Arnason, H. H. and Tseng Yu-Ho, Tseng Yu-Ho: Exhibition of Paintings in Watercolor-Collage, The Downtown Gallery, New York, 1960 Ecke, Tseng Yu-Ho, Chinese Folk Art in American Collections Early 15th Through 20th Centuries, China Institute in America, New York, 1976 Ecke, Tseng Yu-Ho Chinese Folk Art II: in American Collections, From Early 15th Century to Early 20th Century, University of Hawaii Press, 1977 ASIN: B00070SJ92 Nakano, Toru; Ecke, Tseng Yuho; Cahill, Suzanne, Bronze Mirrors from Ancient China: Donald H. Graham Jr. Collection, Orientations, Hong Kong, 1994 Yuho, Tseng; Link, Howard A., The Art of Tseng Yuho, Honolulu Academy of the Arts, 1989 Yuho, Tseng, A History of Chinese Calligraphy, The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1993, Yu-Ho, Tseng, Some Contemporary Elements in Classical Chinese Art, University of Hawaii Press, 1963

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