KWOK KIAN CHOW
Director, Singapore Art Museum (2001)

"See Cheen Tee was prolific in just about every popular medium from painting, print-making to graphic design and caricature"

The four and a half decades of See Cheen Tee's artistic career, from his education at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore where he graduated in 1953 to the end of his life in 1996, coincided with an extremely fertile period in Singapore art. See Cheen Tee contributed in significant way to this art scene. These exciting decades of artistic development characterised by multiple directions and aesthetics, were set against an earlier foundation of artistic initiation and exploration. By the time See Cheen Tee enrolled at the Nanyang Academy, the school had been established for more than ten years. Although the War brought about disruptions to the school's development, the end of the War also generated a new spirit of cultural soul-searching and fresh debates in aesthetics.

1953 was also the year of the exhibition by Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong Soo Pieng and Chen Chong Swee (who were See Cheen Tee's teachers at the Nanyang Academy) and Liu Kang, following their historic visit to Bali a year earlier. This exhibition stimulated the Nanyang movement's refreshing pictorial styles although as a concept the Nanyang movement could be traced back to the pre-War years.

See Cheen Tee entered the art world at this pregnant moment of the early 1950s. His works show that he immersed himself in the earlier tradition too. As an artist who drew influences from multiple sources available to him in Singapore and Malaya, See Cheen Tee's keenness in formal explorations could be seen in his many oil works of the period. His compositions also suggest a strong interest in design and indeed he also worked on some graphic design.

See Cheen Tee was probably best known for his woodcut prints. By the 1960s, the earlier social realist oriented woodcut, which found its genesis in the Chinese woodcut movement led by Lu Xun, has grown into a new maturity to be less interested in direct political messages but with a new sensitivity towards lived experiences and the environment. See Cheen Tee who spent his childhood years in Trengganu never failed to capture the flavours, sights, sounds and moods of the sceneries and the everyday life he engraved.

See Cheen Tee was made a teacher at the Nanyang Academy as soon as he graduated from there. Taking his commitment as an educator further he obtained a Certificate in Education from the Teachers' Training College and went on to teach language and art in high schools in Singapore, Muar and Sitiawan in Malaysia. See Cheen Tee was an artist prolific in just about every popular medium from painting, printmaking to graphic designs and caricature. After retiring from teaching in 1972, he devoted all his time to art practice.

© Kwok Kian Chow

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