Chia Yu Chian : Still Life With Wine Jugs 1967

Chia Yu Chian had studied at the Ecoles des Beaux Arts art academy in Paris during the late 1950s and was a prolific artist throughout his life. Still life painting was one of his fortes and this particular work, revealing syncretic qualities incorporating Western and Chinese influences, is indeed a most accomplished work. The flat empty, pale blue background on which the table exists, reminds us of a traditional Chinese painting devise emphasising the empty void. It heightens, in this case, figure/ground relationships. The aerial perspective view of the tilted table top with its placement of things, which include a fish, a crab and lemons plus the two wine jugs placed on the floor, has allowed for a suggestion of airiness and weightlessness. The forces of gravity have been considerably reduced as is the case in traditional Chinese still life paintings. One half expects the fish and the crab to slide downwards. The rich, painterly treatment of the oil medium is however expressive, modernist and Western. This is clearly a painting about the subtle formal synthesis of differing cultural values, influences and sensibilities. . .

Extract from "Masterpieces from the National Art Gallery of Malaysia" ~Redza Piyadasa

Still Life With Wine Jugs 1967, 76cm x 58cm, Oil on Board

Period of Parisian School

Norfolk 1960, 24cm x 36cm, ink on paper

Paris Street Scene 1959, 18cm x 28cm, ink on paper

The Red Hart Inn 2 Bodham-England 1960, 21cm x 35cm, ink on paper

Moulin Rouge 1959, 24cm x 33cm, ink on paper

The Red Hart Inn 1 Bodham-England 1959, 18cm x 26cm, ink on paper

Parisienne 1960, 70cm x 51.5cm, Oil on board

This superb portrait of a woman in a Paris café exemplifies the romance that this artistic “centre of the world” must have held for the Malayan student, and is a rare instance of such a candid gaze at a European subject.

Chia Yu Chian : The Hospital Series 1980

…Chia’s works often depicted figures, in various shapes and forms. His figures from the 1970s and into the 1980s include the Hospital Series, when he was compelled to be hospitalized due to various debilitating ailments. He spent a few months on and off in the hospital. But his art continued to run rings around such constraints. If he was rendered fragile or weakened by his unstable health, the paintings and drawings of the period do not exhibit such. Instead, in a series of over 25 paintings and many drawings, the otherwise anonymous Hospital series, named for its depictions of the hospital in which Chia was temporarily resident, reveals much about Chia’s irrepressible energy as an artist. The paintings and drawings are a lucid combination of daily observations as well as acute sensitivities to the eventfulness that connote the experience of being in and visiting a hospital. Between waiting rooms, the nurses’ station and open wards, Chia offers an unexpected perspective into what would appear to be private moments in the lives of the community. His ability to compose large groups of people as well as arrange his paintings with as few as pairs or single patients reclining on a bed bring a sober but equally imaginative reflexivity to the paintings. By this we refer to Chia giving us just enough information in his compositions to figure out the context of the goings-on, but also managing to maintain a sense of the confidential befitting the medical incident deemed as necessarily and only privy, to patient and practitioner. These are uncomplicated pictures of people and their happenstance, in a setting that coincidentally is the hospital. One speculates that had Chia been resident in a large boarding house in the middle of Rome during the height of an Indian summer full of activity, he would have been able to document just as aggressively and accurately, the liveliness evident in his surroundings.

~ Bridget Tracy Tan, Director, Art & Corporate Knowledge, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts

Medical Report 1980, 61cm x 82cm, oil on board

By Appointment 1980, 51cm x 69cm, oil on board

Affectionate Letter 1980, 61cm x 82cm, 0il on board

Anguish 1980, 61cm x 82cm, oil on board

Suffering Patience 1980, 61cm x 82cm, oil on board

sketch_University Hospital 1977, 28cm x 38cm, ink on paper

sketch_The Nurse And The Doctor, 23cm x 33cm, ink on paper

sketch_The Patient And The Doctor, 28cm x 38cm, ink on paper

Chia Yu Chian Selected Works 1950 - 1979

According to D.Israel Meyer in the Paris Arts July edition 1959, Chia entered the “tradition and representation of his country as well as the mostmodern tendncies of occidental art...” conserving the “great warmth of colours” while retaining the “love of synthesizing forms.” Not forgetting, Dr Michael Sullivan, scholar and art historian of the Far East and Asia especially notable during the 50s and 60s, who opined, “in its freedom, liveliness and bold use of colour, Yu Chian’s painting is a vivid expression of the richness of Malayan life.”

Still Life 1950, 39cm x 52cm, oil

View Of Jinjang, Selangor 1969, 45cm x 75cm, oil

Portrait Of A Girl 1959, 40cm x 59cm, oil

Kampung 1979, 52cm x70cm, oil

Affectionate Sister / Bathers 1969, 46cm x 76cm, oil

The Emerald Buddha Temple,Bangkok 1972, 46cm x 82cm, oil

Fishing Village 1968, 40cm x 61cm, oil

Maternal Love 1974, 40cm x 69cm, oil

Fruits Seller 1973, 25cm x 31cm, ink on paper

Near The Central Market KL 1968, 26cm x 30cm, ink on paper

Pulau Ketam 1970, 27cm x 34cm, ink on paper

"Chia Yu Chian in Nanyang" 13 Nov-27 Dec 2009

“谢玉谦与南洋”画展

13 November – 27 December 2009

Lim Hak Tai Gallery, NAFA Campus 1

11am – 7pm (closed on Mondays and public holidays)

Pangkor Island 1957 (50cm x 60cm)

Chia Yu Chian gained a French government scholarship to study in the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts de Paris, from where he graduated, in 1962. He was the first artist from the Straits Settlements to have achieved this. Up till that point, such scholarships had only been given to some of the more renowned artists from the Indian subcontinent, as well as China.

NAFA will present 84 works of the artist in an exhibition titled Chia Yu Chian in Nanyang from 13 November till 27 December at the Lim Hak Tai Gallery (NAFA Campus 1). The works, mostly oil paintings and which date from 1950 to 1990, will examine the artist’s stylistic transitions over the years and his extensive palette. During the span of his prolific career, Chia held a significant number of one-man shows in Malaysia and Singapore and abroad, in France, Germany, UK (London), Spain (Madrid), India (New Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay and Madras), as well as Thailand (Bangkok), and he participated in many regional and international group shows. His works are in numerous private and public collections around the world. Chia’s commissions include a grand mural titled “Life in Malaysia” for the Malaysian Embassy in Paris (France), as well as portraits for various Malaysian government and political luminaries.

Mr Pierre Emmanuel Jacob, Executive Director, Alliance Française de Singapour will preside over the exhibition opening, to be held on Thursday, 12 November, 6.30pm, as Guest of Honour.
On Chia’s art and draughtsmanship, Ms Bridget Tracy Tan, Director of Art & Corporate Knowledge said: “Chia is special because he seemed to broadly engage his practice on all fronts, on all terms. His paintings define not just what was visionary about Malaysian art, but what was visionary about Nanyang. There was no aping of Western traditions, but a gentle distillation of established idioms to articulate a persistently catalytic Modernity, one that was shaping and would continue to shape, the communities of Nanyang and their interests over many more decades.”

Chia’s work of the 50s, showing kampong scenes, local landscapes, and daily activities, attests to his mastery in observation and his use of light and space, colour and texture to locate his “observing” of objects. After 1959, his practice progressed into fluid textures resembling the Fauvist movement evolving in mid century Paris, where he lived and studied for several years. Upon his return to Malaysia, though still focusing on the same subject matter, he engaged the use of a more visually stimulating and daring architectural mix of pigments on surfaces.

Chia’s works often depicted figures in various shapes and forms, such as the Hospital Series made up of over 25 paintings and many drawings. These are his daily observations, as well as acute sensitivities to the eventfulness that connote his own experiences, having spent a few months on and off in the hospital. The mature work of the 80s and 90s for Chia seem to stem from the layers of a complex and sophisticated blend of fantasy and reality. The street scenes of local landscapes, particularly of Malaysia, are vivid, direct and rational.

Exhibition Details
Date & Time: Opening: Thursday, 12 November, 6.30pm
Exhibition: 13 November – 27 December, 11am to 7pm daily(closed on Mondays and public holidays)
Venue: Lim Hak Tai Gallery, NAFA Campus 1,
80 Bencoolen Street, Singapore (189655)
For enquiries: Mr Justin Loke at 65 6512 4044 or
email: artgalleries@nafa.edu.sg
Free Admission

Vase of Flower 1990 (39cm x 59cm)

Young Girl With A Hat 1977 (53cm x70cm)

Tractors Working 1982 (53cm x 71cm)

Village 1990 (45cm x 61cm)