Cheong Soo Pieng: A man for all seasons

MOUNTED by artcommune gallery, the current retrospective survey of pioneer Singapore artist Cheong Soo Pieng makes clear not just the sustained quality of his ink works created from 1949 to 1983, but also his impressive ability to adopt and adapt new aesthetics and techniques throughout his life.

By the time he moved from China to Singapore in 1946, the 29-year-old Cheong was already a sophisticated visual thinker who had mastered a suite of techniques from his years of studying art in Xiamen and Shanghai. But that didn't stop him from opening his eyes and adapting his paintbrush and palette to capture the sights and scenes of his new home in Southeast Asia.

In the 1950s, he would employ Chinese scroll pictorial traditions to depict a herd of cattle in a kampong, or ordinary people weaving between wooden houses on planked walkways, or simply a Balinese woman in repose.