John Chin Young

Who was John Chin Young?

John Chin Young was a painter who was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on March 26, 1909. He was the son of Chinese immigrants and began drawing at the age of eight, stimulated by Chinese calligraphy, which he learned in Chinese language school. Young had his first and only art lessons while a student at President William McKinley High School in Honolulu. Thereafter, his art was entirely self-taught. Young is best known for his Zen-like depictions of horses, paintings of children, and abstractions. Over the years, he acquired an important collection of ancient Asian art, which he donated to the Honolulu Museum of Art and the University of Hawaii at Manoa as the John Young Museum. John Chin Young died in 1997 at the age of 88. His daughter Debbie Young is also a painter residing in Hawaii.

During his 60 years as a working artist, Young exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Art. The Art Institute of Chicago, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art are among the public collections holding paintings by John Chin Young.