Untitled (Workers)

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). Although Chia is best known for his oil paintings he also produced works in Chinese ink, of which ‘Untitled (Workers)’ is one of three in the NHB Collection that document Malaysia’s primary industry.