A spectacular display of brilliant colour, exuberant strokes and shifting shapes, Singapore River Scene reveals a tour de force of painterly expression. Executed in 1960, the present painting encapsulates the charm of Chen Wen Hsi’s abstract vernacular and was selected as a key highlight for the ‘Singapore Artists Art Exhibition in Moscow’ in 1978. Organized by the Ministry of Culture of Singapore, the show was the first of its kind, mounted as a form of cultural diplomacy between the then Soviet Union and Singapore.

“This art exhibition, the first to be brought to the Soviet Union, is a collects ion of paintings by Singapore’s foremost artists. By depicting some facets of our multi-racial and multi-cultural society, this exhibition should provide the people of the Soviet Union with an opportunity to understand Singaporeans and our way of life.” – Mr Ong Teng Cheong, Acting Minister for Culture

A curated selection of works displayed a variety of mediums, including Chinese ink, oil and batik paintings, the exhibition thematically culminated around typical scenes of Singapore. Offering perhaps for the first t.mes , a glimpse of kampongs, street walks lined with shophouses and, importantly the Singapore river, as seen through artists’ eyes. Artists selected for the group exhibition included pioneering names of Nanyang school like Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong Soo Pieng, Liu Kang, self-taught artists like Lim Tze Peng, Tan Choh Tee as well as graduates of Nanyang Academy.

Executed at an early peak in Chen’s career, characterised by a passionate curiosity in avant-garde movements and bold experimentation, Singapore River Scene was the only abstract work chosen for the 1978 show. The present work endures as a beacon of chromatic and textural expression, while exemplifying the way the Nanyang artist.mes lded his traditional ink painting training with elements of Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and Fauvism. Though he was dexterous in classical Chinese painting and focused on brush and ink works, Chen soon familiarized himself with “the clinical austerity of the Cubists, the sinister pathos of the Fauvists, [and] the violent anguish of the Expressionists…”

While in Singapore, Chen took the opportunity to collects art books that were not accessible in China at the t.mes . This way, he keenly studied the paintings of Picasso and Paul Klee, artists that played a significant role in his tutelage of Western art. Constantly absorbings new ideas and techniques, even those vastly divergent from traditional canons, the open-minded artist said: “I also believe that the true artist, while he absorbs the traditional and conventional values and merits, is not slavishly bound by them, but builds his own philosophy and style after he assimilates the good features of the past masters.” Chen was receptive to these Western movements and found that they had the potential of strengthening his aesthetic vocabulary.

Using bold gestural strokes in righteous colours, he simplifies the forms and shapes of shophouses along the bustling riverfront, the dimensional space between water and land and creates a kind of spatial flux. Chen’s thick applications of paint culminates in a symphony of architectural form and richly varied textures that captures the essence of a typical day along Singapore’s river –brimming with activity and life. This artistic union of East and West reflects the goals of the Moscow exhibition as a form of cultural exchange. Striking in its painterly bravura, Singapore River Scene constitutes a remarkable sensory engagement with the artist’s local surroundings, reveal Chen Wen Hsi’s sense of imagination which provides an endlessly engrossing visual interpretation of an iconic scene.