HUA, LOW PUAY (1945 - )

“Boats On Singapore River” (c.1980)
Watercolour
26.5 x 23.5cm
Signed lower left
*private collection, Sydney
 
Hua is a prominent, award-winning Singaporean Watercolourist. He studied at the Nanyang Academy Of Fine Arts, winning the National Day Medal in 1977, and the Silver Medal Salon Des Artistes Francais in 1986. He has held solo exhibitions in Singapore, Macau, Taiwan and Malaysia to great acclaim, as well as group shows in London, Osaka and Hong Kong. Hua’s enduring art career spans an overwhelming 4 decades. It is distinguished by an elective range of interests in diverse directions: in landscape painting which fortifies his discipline, in streetscape painting which enhances his understanding of local ethos, in contemporary Chinese ink painting which in the revitalization of a centuries-old tradition, in abstract art for its potential in artistic innovation. This is an important piece, as it shows the Singapore River shortly after the Government undertook it's historic clean-up in 1977; it cost the government $300 million and involved a relocation of about 4,000 squatters, along with hawkers and vegetable sellers, whose daily waste flowed into the river.