Cheong Soo Pieng was a first-generation Singapore artist and one of the seminal pioneers of the Nanyang style of art. Trained at the Xiamen Fine Art Academy and the Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai, Cheong relocated to Singapore after World War II and taught art at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts for many years. During this time, he established an art practice marked by a unique integration of Western and East Asian traditions, and constant experimentation with different styles and mediums that resulted in exciting, new styles of abstract and figurative art. He is best known for his series of Balinese paintings depicting languorous women with elongated limbs and almond eyes, and remains celebrated nationally and internationally today.

Cheong Soo Pieng was born in Xiamen, China in 1917, the youngest of seven children. He studied art first at the Xiamen Fine Art Academy in 1933 under Lim Hak Tai, and then at the Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai in 1936. Six months later, his studies were disrupted by the Sino-Japanese War that preceded World War II, and the academy was destroyed in the war two years later.

Undeterred by the war, Cheong taught art while honing his painting skills, using mostly watercolours and Chinese ink, as oils were a rare commodity during those times of strife. His hard work paid off in 1942 when he held his first solo exhibition of watercolour works. In 1945 he went to Hong Kong, and a year later, migrated to Singapore.

In Singapore, Cheong—like other migrant Chinese artists—found employment teaching art at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, which was headed by his ex-teacher at Xiamen Fine Art Academy, Lim Hak Tai. He taught there from 1947 to 1961, concurrently also teaching part-time at the Chinese High School from 1948. Oils were more readily available to Cheong in Singapore and he began his art practice in Singapore experimenting a great deal with oils, delving into the conceptualisation and creation of new aesthetic expressions better suited to his new home.

Cheong found great inspiration in the landscapes and people of Singapore and the region. Subjects in his paintings included coastal scenes with kelongs, people watching puppet shows, and people going about their everyday lives. His vast collection of sources of cultural and aesthetic inspiration was also often fuelled by his travels abroad. These included the historic trip to Bali with Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi and Liu Kang in 1952 that birthed the Nanyang style of art, and other trips around the region from the ’50s to the ’70s.

In 1961, Cheong retired from teaching to become a full-time artist, and went on a extensive tour of Europe (which he was visiting for the first time) and stayed for a year in London, during which he visited many galleries and museums and became one of the first Singaporean artists to hold a solo exhibition in London.

From the ’50s to the ’80s, Cheong experimented with Western, East Asian and Southeast Asian styles, motifs and techniques, merging influences such as Fauvism, Cubism, traditional Chinese ink painting, wayang kulit and abstract art in unique and diverse ways. He also explored the use of various media, from painting to ceramics to sculpture, even using found objects such as discarded bicycle bells, a hospital kidney dish and window grilles in collages, sculptures and mixed media installations.

His experimentation went through different phases from oil in impasto during the ’50s to works of Chinese ink in the early ’60s, to oils in the mid '60s, to post-London abstraction and two-dimensional collages and sculptures in the late ’60s, to mixed media sculptures, ceramics and abstraction in the ’70s, to painting on ceramics, and a return to traditional Chinese ink painting after a trip to Guilin, China in 1979. Cheong had by then become a respected and well-regarded painter whose influence could be seen in the works of younger painters.

Throughout his career, he held 18 acclaimed solo exhibitions in Singapore and around the world, and received many honours. In 1962, he was awarded the Pingat Jasa Gemilang (Meritorious Service Medal) by the Singaporean government for his contributions to Singapore art. In 1967, the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia featured Cheong’s works in the first of its retrospective exhibitions. In 1977, his oil painting, Mother and Daughter was made into a UNESCO first day cover, the first time this honour was bestowed on an artist from Singapore.

In 1983, Cheong passed away at the age of 66 due to heart failure. His legacy continues to be remembered through posthumous exhibitions of his work by the National Museum Art Gallery in 1983, the Singapore Art Museum in 2010, and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2013. Cheong’s legacy also lives on through his 1978 oil painting Drying Salted Fish, which can be found alongside fellow Singapore artist Chen Wen Hsi’s Two Gibbons Amidst Vines on the Singapore $50 note.