Chen Chong Swee was one of Singapore’s pioneering first-generation artists, and an influential art educator, writer and painter. Born in China in 1910, Chen migrated first to Malaysia then to Singapore in the early 1930s and became a key figure in the development of the Nanyang style. A passionate art scholar and activist, he taught art at various schools, nurturing not only talent but also a sense of place. An analytical and prolific writer, he wrote many essays that contained keen observations and discourses on all aspects of visual arts. A realist painter, he was the first to depict Singapore subject matter in traditional Chinese ink as well as a pioneer in integrating Western and Chinese aesthetic traditions, painting the story of Singapore and its people with sensitivity and a sense of revelation.

Chen Chong Swee—a.k.a. Chen Zongrui and a.k.a. Chen Kai—was born in 1910 in Guangdong, China, and studied art at the Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai. In the early 1930s, he migrated first to Malaysia then to Singapore where he taught art at various secondary schools founded by overseas Chinese merchants, including Tao Nan School, Tuan Mong High School, Chinese High School and Chung Cheng High School, as well as the Teachers' Training College Singapore (now the National Institute of Education). He would also teach as a Chinese ink painting lecturer at the newly established Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Around that time, he also co-founded the Salon Art Society (now the Singapore Society of Chinese Artists) and won an award at the King George V Silver Jubilee Art Exhibition.

Chen was a realist painter. He believed that art should accurately represent its subject matter and be relevant to and easily understood by its audience, that it should communicate ideas and emotions, evoke empathy, and, at its most ideal, “embody truth, goodness and beauty”.

In the diverse coastal and urban environments of tropical Malaya, Chen found a wealth of
subjects to depict in his art. The vibrancy of the emerging Straits Settlements with its indigenous and migrant communities fired his artistic vision and he spent much time exploring locations and painting outdoors, capturing a multitude of sights and moods. His early landscape paintings from the ’40s and ’50s depict such varied subject matter as kampong life, riverscapes, quayside godowns, fishing jetties, churches, ice kachang vendors and tropical storms.

In 1952, Chen, together with fellow Xinhua graduates and peers Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong Soo Pieng and Liu Kang, went on their historic five-month-long field trip to Bali, Indonesia, in search of a unique Southeast Asian artistic expression. The trip greatly inspired the artists, and on their return, Chen produced some of his most well-known pieces including the boldly coloured oil painting Balinese Women (1952), revealing a more clarified sense of the Nanyang aesthetic and its East-West stylistic integration.

Trained in both Western and traditional Chinese art, Chen combined the aesthetic and cultural traditions of both styles, and painted in watercolours, oils and Chinese inks. He made oil paintings—such as 1972’s Returning from the Sea—that were unusually light in texture and feel due to his application of Chinese ink painting techniques, and became one of the first artists to render Southeast Asian landscapes and other subject matter in the Chinese ink and brush landscape format. Chen inscribed on his paintings as a traditional Chinese ink painter would—the accompanying brief, sometimes poetic, inscriptions revealing the realist’s deep appreciation of and sense of revelation and wonderment in his new environment.

Chen’s 1968 Chinese ink painting Kampong (Village) contains an inscription that reads:

“The hills are covered with coconut trees and various other trees.
An abundance of rain is stored amid the green summits.
A sinuous ravine encircles the village and makes it easily accessible by boat.
Although the ridges are lofty, they do not hinder the white clouds passing by.”

Besides being an illustrious painter and teacher who exhibited widely to acclaim, Chen was also a prolific writer. He wrote many essays for art journals on all aspects of visual arts, providing the Singapore arts scene with many interesting, critical discourses on topics including the purpose of art; comparisons between Western and Chinese art; the need for more female artists; the need for a national art gallery; and Singapore art in the ’20s.

In 1969, he co-founded the Singapore Watercolour Society with fellow artists like Lim Cheng Hoe, and Loy Chye Chuan, and served as the society’s treasurer for many years. From the ’60s to the ’80s, he served on various advisory and management committees of art societies in Singapore including the Selection Committee of Annual Singapore National Day Art Exhibition, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Life Art Society, San Yi Finger Painting Society, Singapore Teachers Art & Crafts Association, Singapore Society of Chinese Artists and Singapore Art Society.

In 1985, Chen passed away in Singapore. Since then, his artistic legacy has been honoured in retrospective publications and exhibitions such as Chen Chong Swee, His Thoughts, His Art, presented by the National Museum in 1993, and Passages, selected works of Chen Chong Swee, presented by the National Heritage Board in 1998. In 1995, the National Arts Council established the Chen Chong Swee Art Scholarship Fund for research programmes and overseas postgraduate studies in visual arts.