Frame size: H66.5 x W97.5 x D5.2 cm
Malaysian-born Chia Yu Chian (1936-1990) was the first Southeast Asian recipient of a scholarship from the French government to study in Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris (1959-1962). An active participant in the local and regional art scene in the 1950s and 1960s, Chia had exhibited extensively, regionally and internationally in France (1959) and Germany (1960), with his first solo exhibition in Malaysia (1956). Chia, who was influenced by and had exhibited alongside Singapore’s pioneer artists Chen Wen Hsi (1906-1991) and Cheong Soo Pieng (1917-1983), frequently depicted Southeast Asian life and landscape in his art. With a vibrant colour palette to capture the tropical light, ‘Countryside’ is a semi-abstract landscape, possibly of rural Malaysia.
