Wright Auction

Raised in the small Taiwanese town of Tunghsiao, Ju Ming rose to international prominence as a sculptor in the late 1970s and late 1980s. Ju initially trained in woodcarving and established a successful crafts business, but, at the age of 30, he followed his desire to expand creatively and sought out the instruction of sculptor Yang Yuyu. Yang encouraged the young Ju to practice mental and physical discipline, and the artist began studying T’ai chi in 1976. This practice would have a major impact on Ju’s works, planting the seed for his widely celebrated T’ai chi series of abstracted monumental sculptures drawn from various poses of the martial art form. The same year that Ju apprenticed himself to Yang, he was granted a solo exhibition at the National Museum of History in Taipei; the exhibition was critically lauded and positioned Ju as a powerful symbol of the Taiwanese Nativist Movement.

In the 1980s, Ju traveled to New York, where he continued to hone his skill and gain exposure. It was here that he began his Living World series, figurative sculptures that captured his observations of the contemporary world and modern society. As the writer Huang Yung-sung put it, Ju's "initial themes are Taiwanese, his Taichi Series is Chinese, and his Living World series is international."

In 1999, Ju officially launched what he considers to be his largest artwork, the Juming Museum in New Taipei City. Ju spent 12 years in preparation, personally designing the museum’s architecture and landscaping, and donating more than 2,000 works to the institutional collection. In addition to the prodigious collection at the Juming Museum, Ju’s works are held by the National Museum of Singapore and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, among others.