Lot 25
TAY BOON PIN
B. Singapore, 1936
Untitled, 1972
Signed and dated “BOON 1972” on lower left
Acrylic on canvas
35.5 x 28 cm
Provenance Private Collection, Canada
RM 5,000 – RM 9,000
Tay Boon Pin is a prominent Singapore artist. Born in an Indonesian fishing village, he relocated to Singapore in the early 1950s and studied art at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts under the mentorship of illustrious first-generation Nanyang artists. Cheong Soo Pieng and Georgette Chen. In Singapore’s pre-independence years, Tay was a founding member of the Equator Art Society and became respected for his social realist paintings depicting the lives of working-class folk. Later on, he also became known for his paintings of a vibrant, pre-1980s Singapore River as well as those depicting the lives of fishing folk in many parts of Southeast Asia. He embodies the passion he has for the subject in this work by using vibrant dark hues to create sharp lines with red accents to add extra finesse to the work.