About the Artist  
 

Cheong Soo Pieng (b. 1917, Xiamen, China – d. 1983, Singapore) is an important pioneer of the Nanyang art style and one of the most creative Chinese artists of the 20th century. His varied output, which centres on the bold pursuit of Modern aesthetics and innovative amalgamation of forms and techniques derived from both Western and Chinese art traditions, was instrumental in shaping the development of Singapore Modern art. Soo Pieng studied at Xiamen Academy of Fine Arts in 1933 and furthered his art education at Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai in 1936. At both academies, he was schooled in a Beaux-Arts type of curriculum and was well exposed to both Chinese painting and Western modern art (in particular the school of Paris - Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism). After the 2nd World War, as a civil war broke out between the Communists and Kuomintang forces, Soo Pieng relocated to Singapore in 1946. He took up a teaching position at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) and thereon began his fervent synthesis of Western and Chinese pictorial styles, drawing often from themes and subjects relating to his new, immediate environment in Malaya.

Several overseas sojourns undertaken by Soo Pieng between the 1950s and 1970s were known to have effected distinct stylistic transitions in his artistic oeuvre. For example, the historic 1952 Bali trip (with Liu Kang, Chen Wen Hsi and Chen Chong Swee) culminated in the birth of a regionally influential nanyang art style and seeded Soo Pieng’s lifelong fascination with Balinese figures and Southeast Asian motifs; his longhouse stay in Borneo in 1959 inspired as well a lifelong interest in styling the indigenous Dayak people in a variety of painting formats and mediums; his European trip from 1962-63 initiated a devoted exploration of abstract and mixed media works; and his first return trip to China in 1979 resulted in a repertoire of ink works that sought to reinvent Chinese classicism.