Cheong Soo Pieng

Executed in 1973, the stylistic characteristics of Malay Life is typical of the artist's works produced during the late part of his career in the 1970s and 1980s. In the present lot, the artist drew from his roots as a Chinese artist and re-invited traditional ink painting, using subtle brushwork, a restrained palette and angular lines to paint a group of figures. The approach is at once reductive yet poetic, capturing the fleeting moments of everyday life in a Malay village. Women wearing batik sarongs gather in a market, carrying baskets of food, as vendors man their stalls. A signature motif in Cheong’s works, a large circular sun hangs over the horizon of mountains, bathing the scene in a warm tropical yellow hue. Cheong imbues the work with a quiet calm, as a young goat sips water at a body of water in the foreground.