“Like his contemporaries who came from South China and built their lives and communities in Singapore and Malaysia, Cheong Soo Pieng came and created visions –visions that have become part of our cultural heritage.”
Hailing from the prestigious collection of the businessman and philanthropist Sir Run Run Shaw, Brother and Sister (Lot 1040) exemplifies a distinctive visual style marking the mature and final phase of Cheong Soo Pieng’s celebrated artistic career. Sir Run Run Shaw’s personal connections with Singapore and his immense legacy is poignantly represented by the present work - an enchanting vignette of local quotidian life captured through the lens of the Chinese-born artist Cheong Soo Pieng.
Recognised as a visionary who transformed the region’s artistic landscape by spearheading the Nanyang Art Movement, Cheong’s paintings often evoke an inexplicable utopian sentiment; themes of family and community are prevalent subject matters in his oeuvre. As a result of his classical training in Xiamen and Shanghai, as well as keen observations travelling in Europe and Southeast Asia, Cheong developed a voracious appetite for experimentation.
He sought “to make new art for a new kind of belonging, a new way of seeing the world.”
Brother and Sister is a quintessential example of Cheong’s iconic stylization from a sought-after period in the artist’s diverse oeuvre. Within a tranquil milieu, a young boy and his older sister share an intimate moment, sitting at a large table strewn with wrappings and snacks. Cheong Soo Pieng was inspired by the theatricality of the Indonesian shadow-puppet plays and translated this cinematic quality in the present painting, “backlighting” the figures’ elongated limbs against the lush backdrop, radiating with gold pigments.
The asymmetry of the present lot is strikingly unusual, creating a dynamism rarely seen in the artist’s late works on the market. The simplified geometric dark brown, blue and green shapes echo Cheong’s explorations of Cubism in the late 1950s and 1960s. By distorting the picture plane and playing with spatial dimensions, the artist revisits the abstracted grid-like landscapes he created following a pivotal trip in Europe. These thoughtful interventions in Brother and Sister allows Cheong to display a culmination of artistic explorations from various moments in his life.
「就像來自華南並在新加坡和馬來西亞建立自己的生活和社區的同時代人一樣，鍾泗濱來到這裡並創造了一些願景——而這些願景已成為我們文化遺產的一部分。」
《姐弟》（拍品編號1040）出自企業家兼慈善家邵逸夫爵士雅藏，展現鍾泗濱藝術生涯最後階段爐火純青、獨特出衆的視覺語言。從本作當中，觀者可以感受到邵爵士與新加坡和東南亞的深厚淵源，仰視他生平的傳奇事跡。鍾泗濱生於中國，《姐弟》是他觀察當地日常生活而譜成的迷人小插曲。
鍾泗濱被譽爲南洋藝術運動的領頭人物，為南洋藝術帶來重要的轉變。他的畫多帶烏托邦情調，並且常以家庭和社區爲主題。他在廈門和上海修習古典美術，並將游歷歐洲和東南亞旅行的敏銳觀察化成實驗創作的源源動力。
尋求「為一種新的歸屬感、一種看待世界的新方式創造新的藝術。」（《泗濱》，新加坡南洋美術學院，2013 年，頁143 ）
鍾泗濱的作品非常多元化，《姐弟》是他經典風格的傑出例子，鮮見於藝術市場，出自其創作生涯當中爐火純青的階段，同時期作品備受青睞。畫中一個小男孩與姐姐坐在一張擺滿包裝紙和零食的桌子前，二人在寧靜的環境當中共渡溫馨時光。鍾泗濱受印度尼西亞皮影戲的戲劇性啟發，將當中的電影感融入本畫，在鬱蔥的背景下營造燈光從背後落在人物修長四肢的效果，玲瓏金彩煥然於畫面之上。
本畫的不對稱構圖非常特別，營造豐盈動感，具有這種特質的鍾氏作品現時在藝術市場難得一見。畫中簡化的深棕色、藍色和綠色幾何形狀與鍾泗濱在 1950 年代末和 1960 年代探索立體主義的作品遙遙呼應。他曾在一次重要的歐洲旅程過後創作多件網格狀抽象風景作品，本作通過扭曲的平面和空間維度的探索重訪這段創作經歷，是經歷深思熟慮的結果，從中展示他藝術生涯當中曾經探索過的許多不同範疇，集其大成，經典難得。