FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Retrospective Exhibit - Dora Fugh Lee: A Lifetime of Art at the Chinese American Museum DC
September 20, 2021
WASHINGTON, DC – The Chinese American Museum DC announced a new exhibit opening Saturday, September 25th, Dora Fugh Lee: A Lifetime of Art. The exhibit is the first complete retrospective of the American artist’s expansive work bridging both eastern and western influences and artforms from traditional Chinese brushwork to impressionist oil paintings. The exhibit features more than 50 works of art including ink paintings, watercolors, oils, and sculpture.
Dora Fugh Lee’s name in Chinese is Fu Duoruo. She was born in 1929 in Beijing into the Manchu Fuca clan. Generations of high military officials, royalty, and artists are among Dora Lee’s family lineage, with bonds to both the East and West. The Fu family’s ancestors include the first empress of the Qianlong Emperor, Empress Xiaoxianchun, Grand Secretary Fu Heng, and Prince Fu Kang’an of the Qing Dynasty. The spelling of their surname Fu was changed to “Fugh” by Dora Lee’s father in the 1920’s.
At age four, Dora Lee was singled out as a promising artist by her grandfather, Fu Ruiqing. He served as a national Senator in the late Qing dynasty and in the early Nationalist period of China’s history. She was the only grandchild allowed to sit and learn from him as he practiced calligraphy and painting. At age 11, Dora became a student of Yan Shaoxiang, a renowned master of figure painting. She studied Gongbi, a realistic portrait painting style.
Dora Lee attended an all-girls Catholic school in Beijing and studied directly under Zhao Mengzhu, a master of modern Chinese fine brushwork flower-and-bird painting. He was a member of the Hu She Painting Association, known as “the Cradle of Modern Chinese Painting.”
In 1949, the newly married Mrs. Lee and her husband Richard, left China and resided in Tokyo, Japan, for a time where she became a student of Pu Ru, the foremost literati painter and calligrapher of modern China and older cousin of Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China.
A Washingtonian for more than 64 years, Dora Lee settled in Washington, DC, with her husband in 1957. She studied under the artist and sculptor Pietro Lazzari. In the 1980’s, she taught traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy at the Smithsonian Institution and George Washington University. Dora Lee earned over fifty awards in her career. Today, her works are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, National Museum of Asian Art (formerly the Freer and Sackler Galleries,) the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the China Institute, the Pearl Buck Foundation, the National Cathedral, and the University of Virginia among other notable institutions.
About the Chinese American Museum DC
The Chinese American Museum Foundation is a non-profit, non-political, non-geopolitical 501(c)(3) organization based in Washington, DC. Its mission is to advance the understanding, knowledge, and appreciation of the Chinese American experience, by highlighting the history, culture, spirit, and contributions of Chinese Americans to our nation and beyond. The Foundation, with the support of private and institutional funding, is developing the first and only museum dedicated to the Chinese American story in our nation’s capital. To learn more about the Chinese American Museum please visit www.ChineseAmericanMuseum.org.
