Georgette Chen

Georgette Chen was a modern Singaporean artist known for her vibrant still-life paintings of tropical fruits. These paintings reflect Chen’s awe for the region, which she described as ‘one of the paradises of this world’. She is the only female pioneer of the ‘Nanyang Style’, an art movement combining Western modernist and Chinese painting traditions to depict Southeast Asian subject matters and landscapes.

In 2021, the National Gallery Singapore held a major retrospective featuring 69 of Chen’s artworks from national and private collections. Since that year, Chen’s world auction record has been broken several times. Still Life with Big Durian — a display of tropical fruits — fetched $1,824,286 at Christie’s in 2023. This made it the most valuable work by a Singaporean artist sold at auction at the time.

Chen was born in Zhejiang, China in 1906. She spent most of her childhood moving between cities, including Paris, Shanghai and New York. Between 1927 and 1930, she resided in Paris and studied at the Académie Colarossi, one of the few art schools in the city open to female students. She also trained at the Académie Biloul.

The 1930s was a defining era for Chen. She exhibited at Salon d’Automne, Salon des Tuileries, Galerie Barreiro and Jeu de Paume, among others. She also began experimenting with distortions of the pictorial surface and employed short brushstrokes in her works. Such artistic approaches demonstrate the influence of Post-Impressionist painters such as Paul Cezanne on her work. This decade also marked the artist’s marriage to Eugene Chen, her longstanding muse. They travelled extensively together. After Eugene died in 1944, Chen spent two years painting in China.

Chen migrated to Penang in 1951 and then to Singapore in 1953. In Southeast Asia, Chen’s works took on a more vibrant palette that suggested her sensitivity to the warmth of the tropics. Examples include Still Life (Mid Autumn Festival) and Still Life with Rambutans, Mangosteens and Pineapple — previous world auction records sold at Christie’s — which she imbued with bright red and yellow undertones. She taught at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore, from 1954 to 1980. In 1966, Chen obtained her Singaporean citizenship.

Chen received the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s most prestigious art award, in 1982. A few years later in 1985, the National Museum Art Gallery Singapore staged a Georgette Chen Retrospective, with over 170 of Chen’s works exhibited. Chen died in 1993.