Cheong Soo Pieng's ink drawing Seated Man, 1950, has the energy and woodcut print-type finish typical of his early years in Singapore. The repeated marks around the outlines and shaded parts of the young male model lend a sense of movement to a still pose. The brush marks are made quickly and with calligraphic sweeps, with lighter and wetter midtones applied throughout. Soo Pieng was training in Xinhua at the time in which the New Woodcut Movement, spearheaded by Lu Xun (1881–1936), was influential in the artistic circles of Shanghai. The movement formed in response to the import of German Expressionist woodblock prints by artists such as Kathe Kollwitz (1867–1945) and Frans Masereel (1889–1972). These were reproduced in Chinese art publications in Singapore in the 1930s and inspired Chinese artists there to take up printmaking. The genre was German Expressionist in style but Singaporean in subject matter. This grew stronger after World War Two, at the period in which social and anti-colonial discontent was growing. Soo Pieng was drawing in a manner that was consistent with the graphic energy of woodblock prints at the time.

The brushwork in Seated Man is comparable to Soo Pieng's polychrome oil paintings of the same period, such as Lady, 1949, which sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong (4 April 2015) for HKD 1,875,000 (US $241,875).


Viv Lawes
Art Historian, Sotheby's Institute of Art
University of the Arts London, Imperial College
Consultant, Larasati Auctioneers and One East Asia