Lot 109
Cheong Soo-Pieng
b. China, 1917 – d. Singapore, 1983
Village, 1959
signed in Chinese and stamped with the artist’s seal
ink and colour on paper
30 x 46cm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Selangor
ESTIMATE RM 25,000 – 45,000
PRICE REALISED RM 31,590.00
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The ideas of Cheong Soo-pieng’s Chinese ink works developed from his fortuitous trip to the Dayak longhouses in Sarawak in 1959. Soo-pieng broke new ground by challenging the Chinese pictorial format of the hanging scroll. In Section 2 (Bridging Worlds) written by Seng Yu Jin and Grace Tng in the book, Cheong Soo Pieng: Visions of SouthEast Asia (The National Art Gallery, Singapore, 2010), (Page 121-123): “The pictorial convention… that emphasizes a space continuum between the foreground, middle ground and background… used the near and far banks as a horizontal axis to frame the picture, allowing to middle ground to hold the entire composition together using mainly grid-like lines...”
Singapore art pioneer Cheong Soo-pieng is one of the progenitors of the Nanyang Style with the prototype figure types and incorporating local mileau. He had his formal art education in China, graduating from the Xiamen (1935) and Xinhua (1936) fine art academies. He migrated to Singapore in 1946 after a spell in Hong Kong, and lectured at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art in Singapore, from 1947 to 1961. In 1952, he made the landmark trip to Bali with Liu Kang, Chen Wen-hsi and Chen Chong Swee that inspired the Nanyang Style. He was awarded the Singapore Meritorious Service Award in 1962 and was accorded a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery Kuala Lumpur in 1967. He died of a heart attack in 1983. |