.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Contemporary Chinese ink art holds a central place in the visual arts in Singapore. This season, Christie's is pleased to present a selection of outstanding and iconic works by four of the most important ink art practitioners in Singapore.
Chen Wen Hsi is recognised alongside Cheong Soo Pieng, Liu Kang and Chen Chong Swee as one of the four main proponents of the Nanyang style of painting in Singapore. Though working across a variety of medium, it was in Chinese ink that some of the most excellent works of Chen Wen Hsi are found. The artist's gibbon paintings are critically lauded for their fine detail and masterful rendering, above his other Chinese ink subjects including traditional birds and flowers, landscape and still life painting. Three Gibbons (Lot 2301) presents an opportunity to acquire one of the artist's signature work. Chen Wen Hsi's inspiration to paint gibbons arose from an encounter with a reproduction of a gibbon painting that is a detail from the Chinese art masterpiece, White Robed Guanyin, Crane and Gibbon by the Southern Song painter Mu Xi. Chen Wen Hsi appreciated the lifelike quality of Mu Xi's gibbons and began a lifelong pursuit of excellence in Chinese ink through the perfection of his depiction of gibbons.
After Chen Wen Hsi, a generation of Chinese ink painters came to the fore including Chua Ek Kay and Tan Oe Pang, both of whom came under the tutelage of Fan Chang Tien early in their learning of Chinese ink, as well as the essentially self-taught Lim Tze Peng. Practicing Chinese ink in Singapore, a formative experience that is shared by the three artists is the experience of dual modernity, and the negotiation of their Chinese and Singaporean identities within a rapidly transforming urban topography.
Lots 2302 - 2305 are four treatises on urbanism, personally observed and experienced by the three artists. Highway in Hougang, Singapore (Lot 2305) by Tan Oe Pang is a powerful cascading composition of swiftly executed broad brushstrokes and washes judiciously punctuated by colour accents to create a wonderfully eloquent visual treatise of a highway passing through a residential town in Singapore. Paying homage to the highest tradition of classical Chinese painting, the compositions of Tan Oe Pang's landscape paintings project depth, altitude, and vastness of a scene with grace and magnificence.
Chua Ek Kay's iconic street scenes capture the quietude and singular charm of humble alleyways through the masterful handling of the gradation of black and the orchestration of rhyme with each brushstroke he executes. The artist successfully conveys the sense of introspection he believes is the most essential character of Chinese painting to the two works, Old Street Scene (Lot 2303) and A View of Old Dwellings (Lot 2304).
Lim Tze Peng is arguably Singapore's most significant and living Chinese painter. Having grown up in the kampongs of Singapore and a deeply affected by the large-scale modernisation and urban transformation of the city centre in 1980s Singapore, Lim Tze Peng set out on a by-now highly important personal crusade in the late 1970s to capture the disappearing face of old Singapore, especially around the areas of Chinatown and the mouth of the Singapore River. The present lot, Singapore River Scene (Lot 2302), is one of only a handful of magnificently detailed river scenes painted and one of the most excellent early works from this rare body of works.
Chen Wen Hsi is recognised alongside Cheong Soo Pieng, Liu Kang and Chen Chong Swee as one of the four main proponents of the Nanyang style of painting in Singapore. Though working across a variety of medium, it was in Chinese ink that some of the most excellent works of Chen Wen Hsi are found. The artist's gibbon paintings are critically lauded for their fine detail and masterful rendering, above his other Chinese ink subjects including traditional birds and flowers, landscape and still life painting. Three Gibbons (Lot 2301) presents an opportunity to acquire one of the artist's signature work. Chen Wen Hsi's inspiration to paint gibbons arose from an encounter with a reproduction of a gibbon painting that is a detail from the Chinese art masterpiece, White Robed Guanyin, Crane and Gibbon by the Southern Song painter Mu Xi. Chen Wen Hsi appreciated the lifelike quality of Mu Xi's gibbons and began a lifelong pursuit of excellence in Chinese ink through the perfection of his depiction of gibbons.
After Chen Wen Hsi, a generation of Chinese ink painters came to the fore including Chua Ek Kay and Tan Oe Pang, both of whom came under the tutelage of Fan Chang Tien early in their learning of Chinese ink, as well as the essentially self-taught Lim Tze Peng. Practicing Chinese ink in Singapore, a formative experience that is shared by the three artists is the experience of dual modernity, and the negotiation of their Chinese and Singaporean identities within a rapidly transforming urban topography.
Lots 2302 - 2305 are four treatises on urbanism, personally observed and experienced by the three artists. Highway in Hougang, Singapore (Lot 2305) by Tan Oe Pang is a powerful cascading composition of swiftly executed broad brushstrokes and washes judiciously punctuated by colour accents to create a wonderfully eloquent visual treatise of a highway passing through a residential town in Singapore. Paying homage to the highest tradition of classical Chinese painting, the compositions of Tan Oe Pang's landscape paintings project depth, altitude, and vastness of a scene with grace and magnificence.
Chua Ek Kay's iconic street scenes capture the quietude and singular charm of humble alleyways through the masterful handling of the gradation of black and the orchestration of rhyme with each brushstroke he executes. The artist successfully conveys the sense of introspection he believes is the most essential character of Chinese painting to the two works, Old Street Scene (Lot 2303) and A View of Old Dwellings (Lot 2304).
Lim Tze Peng is arguably Singapore's most significant and living Chinese painter. Having grown up in the kampongs of Singapore and a deeply affected by the large-scale modernisation and urban transformation of the city centre in 1980s Singapore, Lim Tze Peng set out on a by-now highly important personal crusade in the late 1970s to capture the disappearing face of old Singapore, especially around the areas of Chinatown and the mouth of the Singapore River. The present lot, Singapore River Scene (Lot 2302), is one of only a handful of magnificently detailed river scenes painted and one of the most excellent early works from this rare body of works.