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Lot Essay
Cheong Soo Pieng is arguably the most prolific of Singapore’s pioneer artists, as his wide-ranging oeuvre testifies to the versatility of his skill and his tireless drive for artistic innovation. He was one of the key proponents of the Nanyang style of art, which sought to marry the techniques and styles of East and West in the unique representation of localised subjects.
To sustain his limitless desire to constantly develop his practice, Cheong drew inspiration from daily life, but also journeyed beyond the country’s borders to be inspired by the artistic developments of other countries. Cheong was very well travelled, gathering inspiration from around Southeast Asia, and even spending a considerable amount of time in London in the early sixties. His works from the latter period explored abstraction within the pictorial tradition of landscape painting, inspired by his engagement with Western abstraction while travelling in Europe. Such paintings were almost void of any realistic representation, allowing the artist to engage freely with the emotive range of his strokes and his choice of palette.
By the middle of the decade, Cheong’s return to Southeast Asia saw a conscious effort to incorporate the recognizable local landscape as the subject of his works while retaining the freedom and spontaneity that abstraction afforded his paintings. Village Landscape was painted in 1966, around the time of Cheong’s return to Southeast Asia. The wooden huts on stilts stand rooted into the sandy seaside with their rickety structures delineated by sinewy, black strokes. The delicate line work that make up the village draws from Cheong’s formal training in the Chinese ink tradition. Yet, unlike many of the works of Western abstraction which allow an element of chance, the looseness of each stroke in this painting is mindfully rendered by the artist to ensure its fullest effect. Vivid, intense colours are replaced with a more muted muted palette of colours which work together with the visible paint drips and broad, horizontal strokes to suggest a scene peered through a screen of early morning mist, with the sky melting indefinitely into the sea’s horizon.
Village Landscape is an important work for the insight it gives into the breadth of Cheong Soo Pieng’s oeuvre, as he strove for the perfect balance between his solid Eastern foundation and his exciting Western influences, while visualizing the sights bestowed upon him by the place he now called home.
To sustain his limitless desire to constantly develop his practice, Cheong drew inspiration from daily life, but also journeyed beyond the country’s borders to be inspired by the artistic developments of other countries. Cheong was very well travelled, gathering inspiration from around Southeast Asia, and even spending a considerable amount of time in London in the early sixties. His works from the latter period explored abstraction within the pictorial tradition of landscape painting, inspired by his engagement with Western abstraction while travelling in Europe. Such paintings were almost void of any realistic representation, allowing the artist to engage freely with the emotive range of his strokes and his choice of palette.
By the middle of the decade, Cheong’s return to Southeast Asia saw a conscious effort to incorporate the recognizable local landscape as the subject of his works while retaining the freedom and spontaneity that abstraction afforded his paintings. Village Landscape was painted in 1966, around the time of Cheong’s return to Southeast Asia. The wooden huts on stilts stand rooted into the sandy seaside with their rickety structures delineated by sinewy, black strokes. The delicate line work that make up the village draws from Cheong’s formal training in the Chinese ink tradition. Yet, unlike many of the works of Western abstraction which allow an element of chance, the looseness of each stroke in this painting is mindfully rendered by the artist to ensure its fullest effect. Vivid, intense colours are replaced with a more muted muted palette of colours which work together with the visible paint drips and broad, horizontal strokes to suggest a scene peered through a screen of early morning mist, with the sky melting indefinitely into the sea’s horizon.
Village Landscape is an important work for the insight it gives into the breadth of Cheong Soo Pieng’s oeuvre, as he strove for the perfect balance between his solid Eastern foundation and his exciting Western influences, while visualizing the sights bestowed upon him by the place he now called home.