Cheong Soo Pieng was one of Singapore's pioneer artists born in 1917 in China. He studied art in China but had to end his formal studies early due to war. He later moved to Singapore in 1946 and taught at NAFA until 1961. Over his 46-year career, he helped establish modern art in Singapore through his blending of Chinese and Western techniques. While influenced by European modernists, he focused on local scenes and figures to link art and culture. His distinctive style featured elongated figures and was praised for its unique interpretations.

1. SINGAPORE PIONEER ARTIST

2. Who is he?
One of the Pioneer artist in Singapore
Where is he from?
Born in 1917, Amoy, China, deceased 1983, Singapore
What is his background?
- Youngest of seven children in family
- 1933-5, enrolled in Amoy Academy of Fine Art for 3 years
- 1936, moved to Shanghai to study at Xin Hua Art Academy
- Six months later, ended his formal studies as Sino-Japanese War broke out
- 1945, left China, went Hong Kong, arrived in Singapore towards end of 1946
- Taught @ NAFA till 1961
- 46 years of unceasing artistic creation, establishing distinct and important
directions in the development of modern art in Singapore

3. Background of influences on him
- The new art shaped in the twenties and thirties in China
- Re-investing Chinese Art with new scope and fresh vision
- Endeavours based on interpretations of styles and techniques from the
West, and revisions of the entrenched traditions of Chinese Painting
- Art centres: Shanghai, Guangdong, Nanjing
- Principle source of modernism is Europe, particularly the School of Paris
- Art activity is an unending search for the new, directed towards
exploration of visual languages and techniques of execution, that will
adequately express and structure individual perceptions and sensibilities
Why? The need to change:
- Traditional Chinese Painting is being revised as it was seen as lacking force
and vitality
- The works of majority of artists of late 19th century were seen as
repetitions of tried and tired formulas
- The conventional pictorial language lacks conviction and authority
- The traditional language was revised with fresh observations, checking
against nature and enriched by new conventions

4. Soo Pieng’s Art
Soo Pieng on Style:
“ Of course, I do not search for it consciously or create it deliberately. I doubt
any artist does. But it is there. It is a way of bringing order and intelligence to
what an artist is doing. It is a memory maker and also a means of connecting
different ideas and emotions, fusing them into a creative force.”
Unceasing dialogue with the medium
Invested traditional and contemporary techniques and values with new
structures and content
Moving with facility and discrimination between the scroll and easel picture
traditions, he appropriated feature and techniques that are suitable for his
intentions
Soo Pieng’s concern with images: “ the link between art and cultural
environment” ; “ Images, content, subject matter… these are ways of
communicating that link.”

5. Soo Pieng’s Art
Search for images and pictorial content resulted in his canvases being
populated with figures at play, at work or in observance of rituals
His works are also filled with fishing villages, riverine scenes and derelict
houses
Distinct relationship between Soo Pieng and such images - one characterised
by empathy and humour.
From his art, emerges figure types, methods of representation and pictorial
structures which influence many others
Michael Sullivan, a lecturer in the then University of Singapore:
“Soo Pieng’s influence on the younger painters of Singapore has been powerful
and direct

6. Background
 1952: in Bali with 3 other pioneer artists – discovered beauty of
Balinese landscape and people
 Inspired to experiment with distorting human forms
 From study of Western Art publications – maintained study of
trends in Europe and US
 1959: Visited and worked in Sarawak
 1961: Visited Sabah; then travelled to Europe on educational tour
to familiarise himself with contemporary art

7. 1947 - 1952
 Figurative to semi-abstract work
 1947- 52: Fruits, local fishing villages, people at work/ leisure
 Media: traditional Chinese ink, water-colour and oil
 Attempts to combine Chinese & Western painting traditions
 Influences:
- Paul Cezanne
- Franz Marc (Blue Rider)
- American Abstract Expressionism

8. Indians and Cows by Cheong Soo Pieng. 1949, Oil on canvas, 75 x 104 cm.

9. The Little Blue Horses by Franz Marc,
1911, oil on canvas
 Tree trunk divides the
painting boldly into 2
unequal parts – Indian
herdsmen almost
overwhelmed by the cows
 The presence of the cows
is heightened by the
sinuous outlines of the
cows and the sensitive
modelling of their forms

10. Seaside by Cheong Soo Pieng, 1951, Oil on Masonite, 40 x 50 cm.

11. • Expressionistic use of colours and
brushstrokes, conjuring a haunting
image where reality and the imaginary
meet
• Conveys a sinister mood
• Ability to elevate everyday and common Willem de Kooning, Woman I,
place to the level of fantasy and the 1950-52, oil on canvas
extraordinary

12. Malay Woman by Cheong Soo
Pieng, mid-1950s, Oil on board,
49 x 39 cm.

13. Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon, 1907, oil on canvas,
243.9 x 233.7
 Inter-penetrating planes illustrate Cheong’s interpretation of Cubism

14. 1952 - 1954
 Cheong goes to Bali in 1952
 Inspired by the subject matter
 Experiments with human form – distortion, stylisation
 Uses oil in impasto effect
 Influences:
- Henri Matisse
- Pablo Picasso

15. Bali Girls by Cheong Soo Pieng,
1954, Oil, 75 x 60 cm

16. Henri Matisse,
Decorative Figure on an
Ornamental Ground,
1925-26, oil on canvas,
130 x 98cm
 Saw the Balinese maiden as a graceful, slender doe0eyed symbol of SEA feminity
 Elongated limbs, exaggerated slimness and soulful expression echoed features of
Indonesian puppets
 Figures are flattened and silhouetted
 Captured in single-coloured patterns
 Figures are not used to portray emotions or physical reality, but used as a device
for indulgence in pattern-making

17.  Magnified the figures and
continued the decorative
details on the costumes
into the background
 Produced images that are
primarily decorative
Iban Girls by Cheong Soo Pieng, 1953,
Oil on canvas, 72 x 58 cm

18. 1954 - 1983
 Oil paintings: characterised by rich use of mellow earthly colours
highlighted by strategically placed patches of colour, e.g. a red
flower, a blue blouse, a white bird
 Stylised figures are elongated compositionally
 Often grouped together near canvas centre with a cluster of
objects such as flowers, trees, a mat, or a basket of fruit
 Media: Excelled in Chinese ink paintings of landscapes
 Equally competent in Western-styled abstracts
 Paintings of local scenes combine Chinese ink and watercolours

19. Drying Salted Fish by Cheong Soo Pieng, 1960s, Chinese ink and colour. 55 x 88 cm

20. A Dayak family 1975, Oil

22. Cheong Soo Pieng, Weaver, 1981, Oil on canvas, 107 x 131 cm

23. • Done in the early 1980s, rep a phase of
Cheong’s stylistic experimentation
• Created new effects in Chinese ink
painting.
• a period (especially in the 1970s) -took
a keen interest in researching Chinese
painting styles of the Song dynasty
(960 -1280). This interest developed
“ …he has inverted the compositional further, after his trip to China in the
Balinese painting practice. In these, the late 1970s.
human figures and human activities are
scaled in proportion to accommodate a • Unlike his earlier phases of
decorative composition, whereas Soo experimentation (e.g. oil in impasto
Pieng has magnified the figure and effects), keen to explore the effects of
relegated the details of decoration to using thin and diluted oil paint.
the background (and foreground). In
the context of modern art activity, such • In terms of subject matter (figurative
dislocations and reconstitutions of renderings), Cheong continued his
traditional practices provide a vital unique stylisation of elongated figure.
source for fresh directions”.

24. Explaining Orientalism
 A process of colonialist empowerment in the ideological sphere by the
hegemonic (dominant) culture claiming expertise over matters
pertaining to the dominant culture
 Visual representation of primitive culture can be a form of Orientalism
 Representation of the Other
 A process of the construction of the Self as a higher entity
 Reading the work produced in Bali within the frame of an Orientalist
mode
 Artists subscribing to the impulses of exoticism
 Embarking on a quest for the Other
 Explaining connections between a sense of one and another:
- Self-Other
- Coloniser – Colonised
- Male – Female (patriarchal representation of the feminine – other)

25. Applied to Pioneer Artists
 Complex layering of impulses and identity in the Nanyang Style
paintings
 Singapore artists regarded Bali as Self and not the Other within
the context of their regionalist consciousness – cc Paul Gauguin
 Bali – however – was also exotic to Pioneer artists
 Western artists – Gauguin – tend to present local women as
spectacles
 Pioneer artist cited as portraying intimate moments of
camaraderie between Balinese women – supposed attempts at
exploring their subject matter at a more in-depth psychological
level
 However still element of voyeurism in works of Pioneer artists –
women in painting unaware of being watched by spectators

26. Paul Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead
Watching, 1892, oil on canvas
Sleeping beauty 1982, Chinese Ink

27. Cheong Soo Pieng, Tropical Life, 1959, Chinese ink and colour, 43.5 x 92.0 cm