After a decade of hunting, the National Museum of History managed to locate about 30 sculptures by Huang Tu-shui (黃土水) for his retrospective in 1989. Huang was considered a late-blooming genius who quickly rose to become one of Taiwan’s most respected artists during the Japanese colonial era, and his first solo show in 1927 attracted more than 10,000 visitors. Huang died young from overwork at the age of 35 and many of the 89 pieces displayed at his posthumous exhibition were lost after World War II. After Huang’s “rediscovery” during the 1970s nativist movement, much effort was ...