Singapore Government Press Release

Media Division, Ministry of Information and The Arts

36th Storey, PSA Building, 460 Alexandra Road, Singapore 119963.

Tel: 3757794/5

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Mr Robert Kuok, Mdm Huang Aik Chiew, distinguished guests, friends, ladies and gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure to be here tonight to open the exhibition 'Sojourn in Nanyang: Works by Xu Beihong'.

As artist and teacher, Xu Beihong's influence on the development of early 20^th century Chinese painting is well known. As artist, he was one of the first Chinese painters to study in Western art capitals like Paris. Already well-versed in traditional Chinese ink painting, he quickly became a master of Western realist oil techniques. In works like 'Tian Heng and his Five Hundred Retainers' and 'Yu Gong Removing the Mountain', he fused Chinese composition with Western use of perspective and colour tones.

When he was President of the Art College of Beiping (Beijing), he went against convention and appointed Qi Baishi and Wu Zuoren to teaching posts. He was a benefactor to these two gifted modern Chinese artists despite opposition from traditionalists.

A part of Xu Beihong's career that has been less documented was his sojourn in the Nanyang. In fact, some of Xu's formative years were in Singapore, Malaysia, India and other parts of Southeast Asia. This exhibition focuses on Xu's works in Singapore in the 1930s and early 1940s.

In 1925, Xu Beihong was in his third year in Paris when funding from the Chinese government stopped. He was fortunate to meet Huang Menggui, a Chinese businessman who encouraged him to go to Singapore to seek help from Huang's brother, Manshi, a prominent Chinese community leader. Armed with an introduction letter, Xu came to Singapore and became intimate friends with Manshi and others. They not only funded Xu's Paris studies, they also sought painting commissions for Xu and organised exhibitions for him.

From then on, Xu Beihong's ties to Singapore grew stronger by the year. Moved by the Sino-Japanese war in China in the 1930s, Xu painted a series of realist oil paintings depicting rising patriotism among the Chinese people. This made him a target for possible Japanese retaliation.

Xu Beihong was advised by his close friends to leave China. In 1938, he accepted Rabindranath Tagore's invitation to hold an exhibition in India. Stopping en-route in Singapore in 1939, he held a fund-raising exhibition of his works here. It was an enormous success. All the proceeds were donated to the China Refugee Relief Fund.

That exhibition would not have been possible without the generosity and support of local Chinese community leaders like Lim Bo Seng, Lim Boon Keng and Lee Kong Chian. Many Singaporeans bought Xu's works as their contribution to the anti-Japanese war effort.

Xu's greatest supporter and benefactor was Huang Manshi. He had enormous respect for Huang, whom he called 'Second Elder Brother'. Many of his works during his stay in Singapore were in fact painted at Huang's residence, a large compound home in Geylang which belonged to the Huang clan association, Jiang Xia Tang. Huang Manshi lived there because he was General Secretary of the association.

Whenever Xu knew that Huang liked a particular piece of work, he would inscribe Huang's name on it and present it to him. It was thus that second elder brother Huang Manshi came to own an impressive collection of Xu's paintings. These paintings, which now belong to the Robert Kuok Hock Nien Collection, are the highlight of this exhibition. How these paintings came to Mr Robert Kuok's possession is very touching. Mr Robert Kuok's mother was a close family friend of the Huangs, who like the Kuoks, are Fuzhou people. As a young boy, Mr Robert Kuok would often visit the home of Huang Manshi where he met Xu Beihong many times. When Huang Manshi was dying, he was worried for his wife and daughter and, through Mr Robert Kuok's mother, offered his entire collection of paintings by Xu Beihong and other Chinese artists to Mr Robert Kuok in exchange for Mr Kuok's old house at Oei Tiong Ham Park.

We in Singapore can take pride in the knowledge that our forefathers in the 1930s and 1940s were among the first and most enthusiastic patrons of Xu Beihong. For his first exhibition here in 1939, 30,000 out of a population of 600,000 went to see his works. That worked out to 5% of the population which was quite remarkable. This response encouraged Xu to stay on in the Nanyang for another three years.

Many of his greatest works like 'Yu Gong Removing the Mountain', 'After a Poem of the Six Dynasties', 'A Hundred Horses' and 'Put Down Your Whip' were produced during this period.

Singaporeans hold the largest collection of Xu's works outside China. Two of his most famous works, 'Yu Gong Removing the Mountain' and 'Portrait of R. Tagore', now in the collection of the Xu Beihong Memorial Museum in Beijing, owe their survival during the Japanese Occupation to the devotion of Xu's Singapore supporters who kept them hidden from the invaders.

It is thus most fitting that the works that Xu Beihong painted in Singapore for his friend and benefactor Huang Manshi, should have their first public showing here at the Asian Civilisations Museum. This closes a loop in our history for which we are most grateful to Mr Robert Kuok.

It is now my honour to declare the exhibition "Sojourn in Nanyang: Works by Xu Beihong" open.