LIN Show Yu (林 壽 宇) was born in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation. He was descended from the Wu-feng LIN family of Taichung, the former capital.

He was educated at Dong Men Elementary School in Taipei, then briefly the Diocesan Boys School Hong Kong, and Millfield School, Somerset, England, in 1952, for a British education. In 1954 he enrolled for architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic, London (now University of Westminster). In 1955 he visited Bayeux Normandy with his French wife,sketched the city with pen and ink (one with clear reference to Miro) and views of the cathedral, one of which was exhibited at the AIA 1958 as an etching with a dark sun, along with large canvasses, under the name ‘LIN Show Yu’. Instead of graduating in architecture Lin turned his creative energies increasingly to painting, and within a decade was represented by Gimpel Fils and then Marlborough Fine Art, adopting the name of Richard Lin in 1963.

Chinese and Japanese culture and philosophy and architecture influenced his work. His metal reliefs succeeded by reductive white-on-white canvases, with or without aluminium and perspex (and for which he is probably best known),are uniquely his. With 3 such works he was the first Asian artist to be invited to represent Britain in Documenta III in 1964. That year he also became a British citizen. In 1967 he exhibited Painting Relief January 1966, alongside Francis Bacon, at Carnegie International, Pittsburgh. The work became part of the Carnegie Museum collection, and he was presented the William Frew Memorial Purchase Award.

Lin later left London and relocated with his second wife and family to a remote estate in Wales, seeking more wall-space to dry his canvases. He remained in Wales until the mid-1980s then returned to his native Taiwan, becoming an important catalyst there for the beginnings of conceptual art in the 1990s.

Lin is one of several important Chinese diasporic artists who has contributed significantly to post-war British and global art history. 

Lin’s Painting Relief 1964 is on display in Modern and Contemporary British Art, the permanent exhibition at Tate Britain.