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Lot Essay
Cheong Soo Pieng's artistic development is a remarkable cohesion of Eastern and Western sensibilities; a progressive vanguard of abstract experimentation and narrative figuration combined with a keen awareness of the rapid pace of aesthetic modernity within 20th century painting. Born in 1917, Xiamen, China, Cheong Soo Pieng studied Chinese ink painting in the Xiamen Academy of Fine Arts, and later combined this with Western concepts in the Xin Hua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai. By the time he migrated to Singapore in 1946, he had a solid grasp of Chinese ink with Western oil painting history, techniques, pictorial formats. Additionally, Cheong possessed a unique ability to portray the local subject matter of this new environment through a combination of modernist form and traditional ink. This later evolved into the acclaimed Nanyang style of Cheong, and his artisticcompatriots, Liu Kang, Chen Wen Hsi and Chen Chong Swee.
In 1963, the renowned Redfern Gallery at Cork Street, London, organised two exhibitions by two promising Chinese artists whom they felt would appeal to a Western's audience modern sensibilities while still displaying strong elements of traditional Chinese landscape. The two artists selected were Cheong Soo Pieng and Zao Wou-Ki respectively - with Cheong exhibiting first from 23 April to May 17; while the second exhibition by Zao Wou-Ki was held from 29 October to 29 November in the same year. For Cheong Soo Pieng, the Redfern Gallery exhibition was the culmination of a successful European tour; which had commenced at Bond Street galleries of Frost & Reed in London in March 1962 and a second exhibition at Galerie Schoninger, Munich, in November 1962. The works produced and displayed throughout Cheong's Europe trip reflected a similar aesthetic: masterful abstract landscapes of bold vermillion, crimson or yellow backgrounds, and dense painterly intersections of black, blue and red. Cheong showed a distinct preference for the intersection of earth and sky, with a rising or setting sun clearly in evidence - the insignia of cyclical birth and life.
This present work, Subtlety (Lot 24), was exhibited in Cheong's acclaimed Redfern Gallery exhibition in 1963. It is listed in the exhibition catalogue as no. 19 from a group of 24 oil paintings, as well as 30 watercolours which comprised the entire show. Like the other works produced in Cheong's European period, it is an abstract landscape; this time composed in a vertical format similar to Chinese literati painting. Against a gold-hued background a dark, coalescing land mass takes shape. Yellow pinpricks of light fleck the vista as though sunlight filtering through rocks or trees, while azure and cobalt sweeps indicate a body of water; perhaps a valley lake against the foreboding mountain. The entire formation recedes into hazy green mist, finally giving way to the ochre wash of sky with Cheong's emblematic rising sun.
Cheong's principles of abstraction and stacking of colour bands are remarkably similar to Mark Rothko, or to a lesser extent, Barnett Newman. Rothko believed that the purity of abstraction was to dissemble objective shape and deliver its essence through the resonance of colour. Cheong's colour theory and the use of tonal washes to fill up void space reflect his Western inclinations as opposed to the monochromatic Chinese tradition, while his reliance on primary shades indicates a keen sensitivity to the ability of colours to express emotions. Yet the dexterity with which he renders his colour planes is formed by calligraphic intensity; an amalgam of dynamic splashes and daubs against varying thickness of paint formed by the wielding of a high-speed brush. Cheong's approach to modernism is not so much linear as organic; spontaneous rather than preconceived.
Sixth-century Chinese art historian and theorist Xie He declared the the foundation of ink painting laid within the Six Principles (liufa ) of which the key principle was "spiritual resonance and life like vitality". (Qi yun sheng dong). There in lays the essence of the art work. The defining feature of Cheong's work, as a modern artist, but also as an Oriental painter bearing the weight of cultural history, is his ability to infuse "qiyun shengdong" even within an abstract compositions, an underlying sensibility of the painter's aesthetic spirit and life force. This artwork was previously from the collection of Charles S. Wang, a Chinese-born collector who migrated to the United Kingdom, and was a close friend and patron of several Chinese artists such as Zhang Daqian.
In 1963, the renowned Redfern Gallery at Cork Street, London, organised two exhibitions by two promising Chinese artists whom they felt would appeal to a Western's audience modern sensibilities while still displaying strong elements of traditional Chinese landscape. The two artists selected were Cheong Soo Pieng and Zao Wou-Ki respectively - with Cheong exhibiting first from 23 April to May 17; while the second exhibition by Zao Wou-Ki was held from 29 October to 29 November in the same year. For Cheong Soo Pieng, the Redfern Gallery exhibition was the culmination of a successful European tour; which had commenced at Bond Street galleries of Frost & Reed in London in March 1962 and a second exhibition at Galerie Schoninger, Munich, in November 1962. The works produced and displayed throughout Cheong's Europe trip reflected a similar aesthetic: masterful abstract landscapes of bold vermillion, crimson or yellow backgrounds, and dense painterly intersections of black, blue and red. Cheong showed a distinct preference for the intersection of earth and sky, with a rising or setting sun clearly in evidence - the insignia of cyclical birth and life.
This present work, Subtlety (Lot 24), was exhibited in Cheong's acclaimed Redfern Gallery exhibition in 1963. It is listed in the exhibition catalogue as no. 19 from a group of 24 oil paintings, as well as 30 watercolours which comprised the entire show. Like the other works produced in Cheong's European period, it is an abstract landscape; this time composed in a vertical format similar to Chinese literati painting. Against a gold-hued background a dark, coalescing land mass takes shape. Yellow pinpricks of light fleck the vista as though sunlight filtering through rocks or trees, while azure and cobalt sweeps indicate a body of water; perhaps a valley lake against the foreboding mountain. The entire formation recedes into hazy green mist, finally giving way to the ochre wash of sky with Cheong's emblematic rising sun.
Cheong's principles of abstraction and stacking of colour bands are remarkably similar to Mark Rothko, or to a lesser extent, Barnett Newman. Rothko believed that the purity of abstraction was to dissemble objective shape and deliver its essence through the resonance of colour. Cheong's colour theory and the use of tonal washes to fill up void space reflect his Western inclinations as opposed to the monochromatic Chinese tradition, while his reliance on primary shades indicates a keen sensitivity to the ability of colours to express emotions. Yet the dexterity with which he renders his colour planes is formed by calligraphic intensity; an amalgam of dynamic splashes and daubs against varying thickness of paint formed by the wielding of a high-speed brush. Cheong's approach to modernism is not so much linear as organic; spontaneous rather than preconceived.
Sixth-century Chinese art historian and theorist Xie He declared the the foundation of ink painting laid within the Six Principles (liufa ) of which the key principle was "spiritual resonance and life like vitality". (Qi yun sheng dong). There in lays the essence of the art work. The defining feature of Cheong's work, as a modern artist, but also as an Oriental painter bearing the weight of cultural history, is his ability to infuse "qiyun shengdong" even within an abstract compositions, an underlying sensibility of the painter's aesthetic spirit and life force. This artwork was previously from the collection of Charles S. Wang, a Chinese-born collector who migrated to the United Kingdom, and was a close friend and patron of several Chinese artists such as Zhang Daqian.