Background
Chen Wen Hsi was born on September 9, 1906 in Guangdong, China.
1987
Chen Wen Hsi studying a life model at photographer Chua Soo Bin's studio, 1987. Photo by Chua Soo Bin.
1987
2 Jurong Hill, Singapore 628925
Chen Wen Hsi sketching cranes at Jurong Bird Park, Singapore, 1987. Photo by Chua Soo Bin.
1987
2 Jurong Hill, Singapore 628925
Chen Wen Hsi sketching cranes at Jurong Bird Park, Singapore, 1987. Photo by Chua Soo Bin.
1987
Chen Wen Hsi resting in front of an unfinished painting, 1987. Photo by Chua Soo Bin.
1987
Chen Wen Hsi destroying unsatisfactory works, 1987. Photo by Chua Soo Bin.
Chen Wen Hsi with his art. Photo by Chua Soo Bin.
Chen Wen Hsi at work. Photo by Chua Soo Bin.
Chen Wen Hsi eating durians from his garden at home.
Photo by Chua Soo Bin.
Chen Wen Hsi was born on September 9, 1906 in Guangdong, China.
Chen Wen Hsi had his early education at Chen Li Primary School and St. Joseph Middle School. After graduation from secondary school, Chen decided to study fine art full-time at the Shanghai College of Art in 1928, despite his uncle's objection.
Unhappy with the college, Chen transferred to the Xinhua College of Art in Shanghai two years later, where he was taught by such a renowned artist as Pan Tianshou, with half of his classmates a year later. It was at Xinhua where he became acquainted with Chen Jen Hao, Chen Chong Swee and Liu Kang, all of whom were to become Singapore's Nanyang pioneer artists and art educationists. After four years at Xinhua, Chen graduated and returned to Guangdong, China.
Besides, in 1975, Chen was conferred an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the then-Chancellor of the University of Singapore, and President of Singapore, Benjamin Sheares.
After graduation, Chen Wen Hsi established art practice, holding four solo exhibitions in Shanghai and Guangzhou to much acclaim.
In 1946, after the end of World War II, Chen took on a job as a lecturer at the South China College in Shantou, China. A year later, he left China, travelling through much of Southeast Asia before settling in Singapore in 1948, fascinated by the tropical foliage and environs of the Straits Settlements region.
In Singapore, Chen became an art teacher at The Chinese High School and taught there from 1949 to 1968, concurrently teaching art at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts from 1951 to 1959. His teachings as an art educator greatly influenced many of Singapore’s early Chinese artists.
At the same time, he continued practising art, travelling around the region for inspiration and painting landscapes, human figures and animals as well as making abstract compositions in oils and Chinese inks. His earlier works show the influence of the Post-Impressionist movement, and also show his love for nature, cultivated from his childhood years growing up in a rural village in Guangdong surrounded by animals whose habits he loved to observe.
In Singapore, he sought to replicate that experience, rearing animals such as chickens and gibbons at his home, making them - in addition to other animals encountered on field trips such as cows, ducks, squirrels and carp - the subjects of many of his Chinese ink paintings. He was also fascinated by the diverse ethnic communities in Singapore and created many artworks depicting subjects such as ferry workers, labourers, and Indian and Malay children.
In 1952, he made a historic trip to Bali, Indonesia, together with peers Chen Chong Swee, Liu Kang and Cheong Soo Pieng that resulted in fresh inspiration, a wealth of visual sources and a shift in style. Post-Bali, Chen began working more in oil and ink, and his paintings showed the influences of analytical Cubism and Fauvism, featuring the former’s flat, patterned renderings based on life and Fauvism’s non-naturalistic, exuberant colours which vividly expressed the colourful vibrance and exoticism of Southeast Asia. His Western and traditional Chinese influences also began to merge seamlessly, resulting in artworks with a more distinctive voice.
An example is 1990’s famous "Herons" which depicts a flock of herons feeding on fishes in a pond. Playing with light and form, space and structure, and combining the re-assembled abstraction of Western Cubism with the balance, symbolism, white space and light touch of Chinese ink painting, Chen created in "Herons" an unusual sense of logical clutter and peaceful chaos.
Over the decades, Chen painted tirelessly, especially after retiring from teaching in 1968 to concentrate on his art. Through his life, Chen participated in numerous group exhibitions and held numerous solo exhibitions in Singapore and around the world.
Chen passed away on December 17, 1991 in Singapore. Today, his works are in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum.
A Lady
A Pair of Sparrows and Blooms
Abstract
Abstract Cranes
Abstract Landscape
Aiming at Fruit
Assembling
Assembling
Assembling Birds
Back to the Nest
Bamboo and Sparrows
Bathing Ducks
Bathing Ducks
Bathing Ducks
Bathing Ducks
Bird and Pomegranate
Bird on the Branch
Bird on the Branch
Birds
Birds Singing
Birds Flocking on Bamboo
Black and White
Black and White Chickens
Black Fields
Blue and Red
Bombing
Bottle-Gourd and Birds
Busy
By The Bamboo Shore
By The Blue Water
Carps
Catfish
Chicken
Chickens
Community
Corn and Birds
Cranes
Dawn in a Fishing Village
Doves
Ducks
Ducks by the River
Fishing Village
Flowers and Squirrel
Gibbon
The Beauty Contest
Chen was proficient in both traditional Chinese ink and Western oil painting and experimented with a variety of styles ranging from Fauvism to Cubism. His unique style which showed interest in angles but not Cubist strays not far from reality and is obsessed with shapes, and yet not an abstract painter. Chen also did not take to modern western art philosophies of that by western counterparts of his time like Picasso and Salvador Dalí.
Chen was also interested in human figures. He also did not see that humans are complex with distortions and conflicts, but merely a pattern of images, yet not like a pieced jigsaw puzzle. His interest was especially in local Indian people, particularly blue-collared workers and dairymen working in cattle yard; the geometric forms of Indian women dancers was an ideal subject of study for the artist.
Chen's mastery in depicting human figures was also found in keen observation of nature and animals. His subjects include landscapes, figures, birds and animals, still life studies and abstract compositions. Chen was especially adept at drawing egrets and monkeys. Among all the animal paintings by him, Chen's gibbon paintings stand out, as they were noted by Chen's attention to detail and sensitive rendering of the beautiful creatures. His first inspiration from painting gibbons came from a reproduction of a gibbon painting that formed the right triptych of the famous painting, White Robed Guanyin, Crane and Gibbon by the 13th-century Southern Song dynasty artist Muqi.
Awed by its lifelike quality, he was convinced with Muqi's great skill in close observation of the gibbons. So day and night, Chen studied Muqi's print and emulated the painting. Chen had never seen a gibbon when he was in China, and as a result he did not realise that gibbons, unlike monkeys, lacked tails.
It was only much later in the late-1940s, that a foreigner pointed out his error in his painting, and corrected him. Around that time, he had bought a white faced gibbon for $300 at a local pet shop shortly after he arrived in Singapore. This gave him immense opportunities to study the creature's postures and its characteristics, by rearing it in his home garden.