Malay Woman

Cheong Soo Pieng (1917-1983) is regarded as a pivotal figure in Singapore's modern art development. Born in Xiamen, China, 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 was the synthesis of Chinese pictorial elements and the diverse formalistic qualities from the School of Paris. Cheong was a multi-faceted artist who experimented with various genres of painting, techniques and mediums. This is an early work of Cheong's and it shows his experimentation into cubistic mannerism. It was later, in the 1970s, he developed his distinctive personal visual language in the depiction of the human form.