Liu Kang

Biography

In 1952 four artists set out for Bali: Liu Kang, Chen Chong Swee, Chen Wen Hsi and Cheong Soo Pieng. They spent a month on the island, met the Belgian painter Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur and his wife Ni Pollok, and in 1953 showed more than a hundred of the works they had brought back in Singapore. The Nanyang Style (“Nanyang” means “the South Seas”) is usually traced to this trip.

Liu Kang was born on 1 April 1911 in Yongchun County, Fujian Province, in Qing China. At birth he was registered as Liu Kai; the name changed later, possibly because of a mispronunciation by a school principal, but this is not certain. At the age of five he was taken to British Malaya, to Muar, where his father traded in rubber. He finished primary school there and began secondary school in Singapore, at The Chinese High School. After a year the school was closed by a strike, and Liu went to Shanghai, to Jinan University, which had an affiliated school.

After one term he saw an advertisement for the Shanghai Academy of Arts and stayed in China. He passed the entrance examination and was admitted straight into the second year. There he painted in both Western and Chinese styles, and the academy’s president, Liu Haisu, became his mentor. Haisu supported Western methods such as life drawing, and for this he met sharp opposition from the Chinese public, who saw them as a betrayal of tradition.

In 1928 Liu Kang left for Paris and at first lived with Haisu. He studied first at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, then from 1929 to 1933 at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He took part in the Salon d’Automne, often visited the Louvre, and studied Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Degas and Matisse. He met the sculptor Paul Landowski and the painter Kees van Dongen. After Haisu left in 1930, he moved into a boarding house with the writer Fu Lei. The trip to France had been suggested by his life drawing teacher, Chen Hong, who often spoke about French art.

In 1933 Liu returned to Shanghai and for five years taught Western painting at the same academy, where Haisu had invited him. Haisu doubted his pupil’s teaching ability and named his studio “Haisu, Liu Kang Studio” to give it weight, and before Liu arrived he set up an exhibition of his Paris works for the students. In 1937 Liu married Chen Jen Ping, sister of the artist Chen Jen Hao. In August of that year, because of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the family moved to Muar. Short of materials, he tried chalk and pastel there. In 1942 Liu moved to Singapore and taught art at several Chinese schools. During the Japanese occupation he went back to Muar; the 200 paintings he had left at a school in Singapore had vanished when he returned. In 1946 he made 36 sketches for the book Chop Suey, about the years of the occupation.

From 1946 to 1958 Liu was chairman of the Society of Chinese Artists. In 1949 he helped found the Singapore Art Society and from 1968 to 1979 was its president. After Bali he worked mainly in oil: broad areas of flat colour, a thick dark outline reminiscent of Chinese ink painting, and the influence of Fauvism and Post-Impressionism. Of the four artists on the trip, he alone painted chiefly in oil. In his still lifes he replaced traditional motifs with local ones: tropical orchids, crabs, fruit. He kept up life drawing until he was in his nineties. His first solo exhibition was held in 1957.

In 1970 the Singapore government awarded him the Bintang Bakti Masyarakat (Public Service Star), and in 1996 the Pingat Jasa Gemilang (Meritorious Service Medal). In 1971 he travelled to India, and in 1974 and 1979 to China. In 1981 the National Museum of Singapore showed a retrospective of more than 220 works, and in 1983 an exhibition of his work toured Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung and Tainan. An exhibition in Beijing, planned for 1989, was postponed and took place only in 2000. In May 2003, at the age of 92, he gave the Singapore Art Museum most of his paintings and sketches, more than a thousand works.

Liu Kang died on 1 June 2004 in Singapore. He was the last surviving member of the Bali trip.