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Lot Essay
Celebrated for his lyrical and romantic portrayal of fishing villages, kampong scenes and urban landscapes, as well as his signature stylized rendition of the water buffalo, a common agrarian beast in Southeast Asia, Tay Bak Koi is one of Singapore's most regarded second-generation artists.
Tay's talent for drawing was cultivated at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts where he began studying in 1957 under pioneer artist, Cheong Soo Pieng. Although taught in the best traditions of western and eastern art, Tay was, however, dissatisfied with the structural rigidity and formal instructional methods of the school. He soon became aware that to be an artist, he had to carve out a distinctive stylistic direction for himself.
The four lots of the artist presented at Christie's this season represent the diversity of Tay Bak Koi's oeuvre. The earliest work of the artist in this collection, Lot 330 Still Life with Bottles and Fruit Platter, displays a keen sensitivity to colours, decorative details and fine line work. In a work like Lot 327 A Village Scene, Tay used colours sparingly, playing on the resonances and complexities of a single colour, emphasizing the rustic nature of the kampong with the natural brown tones.
Lot 324 Riverside Houses and Boats depict urban landscapes in Tay's highly distinctive style, where realist forms are made slightly abstract to the point of becoming patterns. Through a process of eliminating and distorting complex forms to their basic shapes, Tay shows his keen appreciation and presentation of the two-dimensional aspect of painted surfaces.
Lot 323 Tending to Buffalo in the Rain is perhaps Tay's most recognized pictorial subject. The water buffalo, an ever presence in agrarian societies in the Southeast Asian region, is a beast that enthralled Tay. His buffalo is rendered in its most primordial form, that of a massive humped body supported by a pair of inverted V-shaped legs and a small head adorned with two elegantly-curved horns.
Tay's talent for drawing was cultivated at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts where he began studying in 1957 under pioneer artist, Cheong Soo Pieng. Although taught in the best traditions of western and eastern art, Tay was, however, dissatisfied with the structural rigidity and formal instructional methods of the school. He soon became aware that to be an artist, he had to carve out a distinctive stylistic direction for himself.
The four lots of the artist presented at Christie's this season represent the diversity of Tay Bak Koi's oeuvre. The earliest work of the artist in this collection, Lot 330 Still Life with Bottles and Fruit Platter, displays a keen sensitivity to colours, decorative details and fine line work. In a work like Lot 327 A Village Scene, Tay used colours sparingly, playing on the resonances and complexities of a single colour, emphasizing the rustic nature of the kampong with the natural brown tones.
Lot 324 Riverside Houses and Boats depict urban landscapes in Tay's highly distinctive style, where realist forms are made slightly abstract to the point of becoming patterns. Through a process of eliminating and distorting complex forms to their basic shapes, Tay shows his keen appreciation and presentation of the two-dimensional aspect of painted surfaces.
Lot 323 Tending to Buffalo in the Rain is perhaps Tay's most recognized pictorial subject. The water buffalo, an ever presence in agrarian societies in the Southeast Asian region, is a beast that enthralled Tay. His buffalo is rendered in its most primordial form, that of a massive humped body supported by a pair of inverted V-shaped legs and a small head adorned with two elegantly-curved horns.