“Art is like a kite,” the late Wu Guanzhong once said. “You have to pull the string hard in order to stretch it to its limit, but you don’t want to pull it so hard that you break the thread.” A founder of modern Chinese painting and an artist who was politically oppressed during the Cultural Revolution, Wu embraced both Eastern and Western influences. To celebrate the centennial of Wu’s birth, Singapore’s National Gallery displays his amazing work in ink—free and taut, kites on strings. —J.V.