Carlisle Chang was a multi-media artist and designer. His work was experimental and his creative activities were quite diverse. He is associated with the nationalist movement in the late 50s and early 60s, and was involved in designing the national flag as well as the coat of arms of Trinidad and Tobago. Most of his murals were commissioned for state buildings in this era. The artist later became quite disillusioned after many of these works were vandalized and discarded. One of his most important murals, The Inherent Nobility of Man, was destroyed during a renovation of the national airport in the late 70s, barely 15 years after it was commissioned at Independence. This occurred despite attempts to move or preserve and in spite of public petitions and protests.
A characteristic of his work, whether figurative or abstract, is a geometric simplification of form, creating a schematized surface derived from European movements like Cubism and the Mexican muralists. However the influence of pioneer Modernist Trinidadian painters such as Sybil Atteck should also be considered. This Modernist style was a strong influence on artists throughout the world in the first half of the 20th Century.
Chang returned to Trinidad in 1954 and opened his painting studio in Port of Spain the following year. The ensuing two decades were his most productive years, with more than ten murals in a variety of media, as well as costumes and sets for theatre and ballet, and innovative and influential concepts and design for more than twelve years of Carnival.
Carlisle Chang’s early art education included a correspondence course from the Washington School of Art, a two-year study program under Amy Leong-Pang and a Master’s certificate from the New York Institute of Photography. A British Council Scholarship in 1950 enabled him to study poetry, painting and mural painting at the L.C.C. Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, where he received the diploma in 1953 and won an Italian Government Scholarship to the Instituto Statale d’Arte for Ceramics in Faenza.
