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Lot Essay
Cheong Soo Pieng's signature aesthetic has been a major cornerstone for the 'Nanyang School' of art: a visual style which fuses Chinese pictorial traditions and European modernism; associated with the first generation of Chinese émigré artists to Singapore. The Shanghai-trained Cheong arrived in Singapore in 1946 and quickly formed a tight fraternity with other Chinese-born painters Liu Kang, Chen Chong Swee, and Chen Wen His. The four congregated at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art (NAFA), then under the principalship of Lim Hak Tai, where they taught the next generation of art students, espoused experimental and modernist art theories, and inspired each other's work. A NAFA colleague around the same time was the Sino-Parisian female artist Georgette Chen.
In 1952, the quartet made a historic field visit to Bali to search for more localized subject matter within Southeast Asia beyond Singapore's shores. The result of this trip led to an enduring fascination with the elegant Balinese women, pastoral villages and panoramic landscapes within their work, particularly in Cheong's artistic output over the next thirty years. Cheong also travelled around the region of Borneo, incorporating its colorful native culture into his Southeast Asian oeuvre.
Life by the River (Lot 31) is a superbly executed panorama of a Malayan river scene, representing a mature stage in Cheong's career where his iconic technique is soundly in evidence, and he uses strong black lines reminiscent of Chinese ink and brush combined with warm gold-hued oil paint to strong effect. His trademark 'pointillism' is clearly applied to depict the background trees, and again to reflect the sunlight dappling the river surface. The sparse, swiftly created lines of the rocks and grass, the thatched roofs of the river boat and village houses all identify Cheong simultaneously as an Eastern aesthete as well as a skilled Western modernist. This harmony of multicultural technique and perspective has served to define Cheong's artworks throughout his lifetime.
In the foreground of the pictorial plane, the clustered figures indicate a continuation of Cheong's unique depiction of Southeast Asian women. Through their delicate and elongated bodies, Cheong elaborates on his characteristic stylisation of traditional village femininity, casting their beauty within the simplicity of line and form. Cheong possessed a deep appreciation for native weaving, incorporating the repetitive patterning of Southeast Asian batik into a variety of his artistic works. The colorful and textured batik cloth draped around the women's' forms and in their washing basins reflect the style of geometric collage which Cheong enjoyed experimenting with in his more abstract paintings or three-dimensional metal reliefs.
Painted in 1979 - a prime period for Cheong - Life by the River is an elaboration of the early fascination which the artist developed from the 1952 Bali trip, but expressed to a deeper level of maturity and subtlety.
In 1952, the quartet made a historic field visit to Bali to search for more localized subject matter within Southeast Asia beyond Singapore's shores. The result of this trip led to an enduring fascination with the elegant Balinese women, pastoral villages and panoramic landscapes within their work, particularly in Cheong's artistic output over the next thirty years. Cheong also travelled around the region of Borneo, incorporating its colorful native culture into his Southeast Asian oeuvre.
Life by the River (Lot 31) is a superbly executed panorama of a Malayan river scene, representing a mature stage in Cheong's career where his iconic technique is soundly in evidence, and he uses strong black lines reminiscent of Chinese ink and brush combined with warm gold-hued oil paint to strong effect. His trademark 'pointillism' is clearly applied to depict the background trees, and again to reflect the sunlight dappling the river surface. The sparse, swiftly created lines of the rocks and grass, the thatched roofs of the river boat and village houses all identify Cheong simultaneously as an Eastern aesthete as well as a skilled Western modernist. This harmony of multicultural technique and perspective has served to define Cheong's artworks throughout his lifetime.
In the foreground of the pictorial plane, the clustered figures indicate a continuation of Cheong's unique depiction of Southeast Asian women. Through their delicate and elongated bodies, Cheong elaborates on his characteristic stylisation of traditional village femininity, casting their beauty within the simplicity of line and form. Cheong possessed a deep appreciation for native weaving, incorporating the repetitive patterning of Southeast Asian batik into a variety of his artistic works. The colorful and textured batik cloth draped around the women's' forms and in their washing basins reflect the style of geometric collage which Cheong enjoyed experimenting with in his more abstract paintings or three-dimensional metal reliefs.
Painted in 1979 - a prime period for Cheong - Life by the River is an elaboration of the early fascination which the artist developed from the 1952 Bali trip, but expressed to a deeper level of maturity and subtlety.