锺泗宾　Cheong Soo Pieng

Cheong Soo Pieng

Born:        1917

Education: 1933 – Amoy Fine Art Academy

                     1936 – Shanghai Academy of Fine Art

This much reproduced work was created by Cheong Soo Pieng who was one of the most innovative and influential of the Nanyang artists of the post-War era. Soo Pieng had arrived in the then British Malaya in 1946 from mainland China and became a highly influential teacher at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. He was involved in many bold artistic experimentations during the 1950s and almost single-handedly defined the so-called Nanyang style of painting that is today associated with the historically significant Nanyang artists.

Soo Pieng was involved in the construction of pictorial schemas and this painting embodies the most interesting aspects of his eclectic approach. The artist has combined influences derived from the School of Paris, traditional Chinese painting and also the Southeast Asian region. The idealised rural Malay scene, as depicted here, was a popular theme with the Nanyang artists. The stylised figure types depicted here were invented by the artist from his close study of the traditional tribal scuiptures of the region. A closer scrutiny of these figures will reveal the artist's interest in Cubism as well. The long horizontal format of the work is clearly derived from the traditional Chinese horizontal hand scroll. The figures have been isolated within separate "space cells" which are demarcated by the tree trunks. The artist has forced a horizontal reading of the work from left-to-right or from right-to-left. The use of Chinese peripheral vision rather than Western central vision was emphasised. The combination of Chinese inks and the Western gouache medium and colours, rendered on traditional Chinese rice paper, also reveal the highly innovative and eclectic character of Soo Pieng's interesting experiments during the 1950s.