Lot 030
TAN CHOON GHEE
b. Penang, 1930 - 2010
UNTITLED, 1962
Signed and dated 'Tan 1962' with one seal of the artist (top right)
Ink on paper
64cm x 36cm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Kuala Lumpur.
ESTIMATE RM 5,000 - 8,000
|
Tan Choon Ghee was already well-schooled in the intricacies of painting in 1962. He had graduated in Fine Art from the Nanyang Academy in Singapore (1951) and the Slade School in London in 1959. So when he did this attap stilt-house village in monochrome, unusual for his colourful oeuvre, it revealed tonal delicacy and a tight composition. Certainly not like the spontaneity of quick strokes in his Chinese ink sketches. Then, he simply signed off his work with ‘Tan.’ In 1962, he had had solo exhibitions at the British Council in Penang and the National Library in Singapore. He had sacrificed a lot of material comforts to pursue a career as a fulltime artist despite more lucrative prospects elsewhere, and giving up his well-paying jobs in television broadcasting for TV Singapore and TVB Hong Kong.
From a humble first solo at the Hooi Ann Association makeshift gallery in Penang in 1956, he capped his career with two Retrospectives in his honour, by the Penang State Art Gallery (PSAG) in 1996 and 2000, a tribute show in Kuala Lumpur in 2009, and a posthumous show of his sketchbooks and paper works organised by the PSAG in 2014 titled ‘A Lifetime of Drawings.’ |