Lot 030
Chia yu chian
b. Johor, 1936 - d. Kuala Lumpur, 1990
Sisters, 1955
signed ‘Yu Chian’ (upper left)
oil on masonite board
66 x 52cm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Kuala Lumpur
ESTIMATE RM 42,000 – 68,000
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This work is a portrait of female bonding, sisters, in good relationship. One can tell the siblings are very closed, what they went through and how they supported each other, the good and bad times together, how their sisterhood was defined and tested. The patterns and cuts of their dresses / clothes betray a 1950s / 1960s period apart from the Fauvist spread. And you can almost hear the upbeat mood song, Ye Shanghai (Shanghai Night) originally sung by the great actress-songbird Zhou Xuan, blaring from a transistor radio in the background.
Since the first Henry Butcher Art Auction in 2010, Chia Yu Chian has emerged as the perennial auction darling. He was the first in the Straits Settlement to have received a French Government scholarship to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris (1959-1962). He excelled himself there with rare (for an Asian then) honorary mentions in the Salon des Independents and the Societe des Artistes Francaise, apart from having been accepted for exhibitions a record 15 times, besides solos at the Galerie de Villiers and the Salon de Paris in Paris. He was honoured with Memorial exhibitions by The Art Gallery Penang (1997) and the National Art Gallery (Kuala Lumpur, 2002). The Nanyang Academy of Fine Art (NAFA) hosted a posthumous Chia Yu Chian in Nanyang exhibition in Singapore in 2009 (although he was not a NAFA alumni). He was commissioned to do a grand mural, Life In Malaysia for Malaysian High Commission in Paris, in 1962, and the same year, his homecoming solo at the British Council Penang saw all 110 paintings sold (for a total of RM12,000), and since then he had had solos all over Europe, Thailand and India. The exhibition Chia Yu Chian: Private Lifes held at Ilham Gallery last year was well organised, showcasing his paintings from the late 1960s until his passing in 1990. |