Zobel & Basoeki: Two artists, two styles, one regional conversation

Business Times

22-05-2025

[SINGAPORE] National Gallery Singapore's new exhibition on Fernando Zobel opens like a soft breath – quiet, deliberate, and reverent. It is as much an exercise in restraint as it is in revelation, with Zobel's best paintings often feeling like memories suspended mid-air. In an age that values speed and immediacy, his practice reminds us of the virtue of patience and refinement.
For him, meaning emerges not from noise, but from order – hence, the exhibition title, 'Order Is Essential'.
Born in 1924 in the Philippines to a prominent Spanish family, Zobel was far more than just an artist. He was a scholar, a collector, and a founder of institutions – including the Ateneo Art Gallery in Manila and the Museo de Arte Abstracto Espanol in Cuenca. Influenced by Asian calligraphy, American abstract expressionism, and European art history, Zobel created a language that was abstract but deeply meditative – a fusion of East and West, intellect and instinct.
Fernando Zobel's Saeta 44 (1957) appears spontaneous – but it was meticulously planned, the thin lines applied with the use of a syringe. PHOTO: NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE
This is the first time Singapore has staged a solo exhibition of Zobel's work, and it does so with conviction. There are 200 works, spanning paintings, prints, sketches, photographs and archival materials, arranged across two galleries. They trace a cosmopolitan career that moved between Manila, Madrid, Cuenca, and the United States.
Each section of the exhibition reflects a different phase of Zobel's practice. The first section, titled 'With every single refinement', chronicles his time in New England, where he immersed himself in Harvard's art history classes and sketched his way through museums. The next section, 'Thin lines against a field of colour', transports visitors to 1950s Manila, where Zobel developed his signature technique: using a syringe (without a needle) to draw delicate, controlled lines of paint across the canvas. His Saeta series demonstrates the precision and grace that would define his mature style.
Later works, particularly those in the Serie Negra and La Vista series, reveal Zobel's increasing interest in distillation – both of form and meaning. His compositions grow quieter and more minimal, searching for the essence of a moment. By the time the viewer arrives at 'The light of the painting', the exhibition's final section, Zobel has become almost monk-like – abstracting the landscapes of Cuenca into soft gestures, as though painting the memory of light rather than light itself.
A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU
Friday, 2 pm Lifestyle
Our picks of the latest dining, travel and leisure options to treat yourself.
Sign Up
Sign Up
Fernando Zobel's unfinished final painting El Puente (The Bridge) (1984) depicts a quiet bridge in Cuenca. PHOTO: MUSEO DE ARTE ABSTRACTO ESPANOL
The curators – led by Dr Patrick Flores – have taken care to contextualise Zobel not only within South-east Asia, but within global modernism. Works by artists he collected and championed, such as Antoni Tapies, Liu Kuo-sung, and Mark Rothko, are shown alongside his own, reflecting a life spent building connections across geographies and disciplines.
That spirit of transnational dialogue continues elsewhere in the Gallery: While Zobel's exhibition unfolds across two grand galleries, a smaller presentation in the Dalam Southeast Asia gallery spotlights the work of the late Indonesian painter Basoeki Abdullah.
Like Zobel, Basoeki traversed borders and power structures – but with a very different brush. Where Zobel pursued abstraction and restraint, Basoeki embraced realism and spectacle – crafting luminous portraits of political elites and pastel drawings of idealised women that positioned him as one of South-east Asia's most sought-after portraitists in the post-war era.
Basoeki Abdullah specialised in portraits of socialites and politicians, capturing the glamour of wealth and power. PHOTO: NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE
Titled Diplomacy And Desire, the exhibition explores Basoeki's complicated dual role as both court painter and cultural diplomat. During his time in Singapore between 1958 and 1960, he painted and gifted two large-scale works – Labour (1959) and Struggle For The Re-establishment Of The Democracy And The Right For The People (1981) – as acts of symbolic alignment during a pivotal moment in the nation's political development.
'These works – now part of Singapore's National Collection – represent art not simply as aesthetic output, but as ideological soft power,' explains curator Kathleen Ditzig.
Basoeki Abdullah's painting Labour (1959) presents an image of a futuristic civilisation and was gifted to the City Council of Singapore in 1959 – the year the island achieved self-governance. PHOTO: NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE
Displayed alongside them are pastel portraits of local women and political figures – stylised, idealised, seductive. His sitters included the leading socialites of the time, as well as political figures such as Soekarno, Soeharto, King Bhumibol, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and Sultan Bolkiah. Behind the glamour, Basoeki was painting power and privilege.
Seen together, Order Is Essential and Diplomacy And Desire offer a compelling juxtaposition. Zobel chased silence, Basoeki captured noise. One worked in metaphors of memory and light, the other dealt in likeness and legacy. Both, in their own ways, used painting to navigate postcolonial South-east Asia – a region then, and perhaps still, grappling with identity, modernity, and influence on the world stage.
Fernando Zobel: Order Is Essential runs until Nov 30, 2025. Diplomacy And Desire: Basoeki Abdullah in Singapore runs until Feb 1, 2026