Frame size: No mounting
Cheong Soo Pieng, born in Xiamen (Amoy), China in 1914, was accomplished in ink painting having received training in art at Xiamen Academy of Art and Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai. A year after his arrival in Singapore in 1946, he started lecturing at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and stayed on till 1961. However it was a trip taken with fellow artists Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi and Liu Kang in 1952 to Bali to seek inspiration and seek fresh subject matter that sealed his standing as a pivotal figure in Singapore’s modern art development. He was part of a group of artists that attempted to articulate a style identifiable and pertinent to post-war Singapore, then known collectively with Malaysia, as Malaya. This style, later crystallized as the Nanyang style, provided a foundation upon which future generations of artists learned and expanded on. A key element of the Nanyang style is the synthesis of Chinese pictorial elements and the diverse formalistic qualities from the School of Paris. In 1962, the Singapore government awarded Cheong with the Meritorious Service Medal. He passed away in 1983.‘Untitled (Boatman Rowing among The Kelongs)’ is a reflection of the ‘localness of the place’, a theme that resonates strongly in Cheong’s art. This is one of countless sketches he made of the people and landscape of Southeast Asia which collectively provide useful entry points to understand the sources of his iconography. A ‘kelong’ is a fish trap built on wooden stilts out in the sea, and common to the Southeast Asian region.
