Latest news with #FernandoZobel
Business Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Times
Zobel & Basoeki: Two artists, two styles, one regional conversation
[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
Business Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Times
Travelling for health
Just as Julia Roberts popularised the whole idea of soul-searching journeys in Eat, Pray, Love, travellers continue to follow in her footsteps, except that their objective isn't so much romance but personal health and well-being. While Covid-19 had plenty to do with increasing the awareness for self-care and healing, the fact that wellness tourism is still on a strong upward trajectory shows that a lot more people are heading to the likes of Bali for sunrise meditation, or doing yoga in the serene hills of Sri Lanka and Bhutan. In this week's BT Lifestyle, we find out why more travellers in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific are moving beyond shopping and eating trips in Japan, and prioritising wellness breaks instead. If you've ever returned from a holiday more exhausted than before you left, you can see the appeal of vacations spent on rest, relaxation and reconnection. Meanwhile in Design, we visit a house designed around a courtyard, with plenty of lush landscaping to soften its hard architectural edges. In Arts, the National Gallery presents a solo exhibition of the late artist Fernando Zobel. And for your reading pleasure, we spotlight some new non-fiction books that might strike your fancy. In Dining, the Japanese restaurant fad doesn't seem to be abating. We check out the new Keijo, a mid-priced sushi eatery that replaces the former Shinji outlet at Carlton Hotel, to see how the rebranded eatery measures up. For all this and more, don't miss this week's BT Lifestyle.
Straits Times
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Arts Picks: Fernando Zobel show, Sun Yee and students exhibition, SCCC's Cultural Extravaganza
Transcontinental artist Fernando Zobel's exhibition Order Is Essential at the National Gallery Singapore opens from May 9 to Nov 30. PHOTO: NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE Fernando Zobel: Order Is Essential Transcontinental artist Fernando Zobel is the subject of an illuminating exhibition that reveals how various strains of modernism – brewing across the 20th century from the United States to Europe to Asia – coalesced in a towering figure of modern art. Zobel – born in the Philippines to a prominent Spanish family in 1924 – was dazzled by a Mark Rothko exhibition when studying in Rhode Island, lived in a house of Japanese design, studied Chinese ink and experimented with the use of a syringe in applying paint to his canvas . Order Is Essential, co-curated by Patrick Flores and Clarissa Chikiamco, is a whirlwind tour through his worldly education. Transcontinental artist Fernando Zobel experimented with using a syringe to paint. PHOTO: NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE In Manila, he created the first museum of Philippine modern art, Ateneo Art Gallery. An earlier work, Carroza (1953), was inspired by his interest in Philippine religious imagery such as floats and carriages – but the picture is fractured through his experiments with Cubism . Things get radically pared down as one moves through the rooms and witnesses how Zobel's abstraction almost sublimates into pure form. The magnum opus in the exhibition i s La Vista XXVI (1974) – a painting of an enormous gorge Zobel could see from outside his museum in Cuenca, which is perched on a cliff. The magnum opus in the exhibition is La Vista XXVI (1974) – a painting of an enormous gorge Zobel could see from outside his museum in Cuenca, which is perched on a cliff. PHOTO: NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE What remains in this piece are airy brushstrokes reminiscent of the movement of Chinese ink on rice paper and faint lines made by a syringe that hold up the entire edifice of the painti ng. It is not just Zobel on show. Artists whose works he collected and those he was influenced by make the exhibition special. American painter Rothko's Multiform (1948) is a treat, as is Chinese artist Liu Kuo-sung's Lofty Zigzag (196 8) and works by Spanish modernists. In place of a straightforward linear biography at the end of the exhibition, a networked illustration closes the show, visualising Zobel's various connections to modernism across time and spac e. Where: National Gallery Singapore, 1 St Andrew's Road MRT: City Hall When: May 9 to Nov 30, 10am to 7pm daily Admission: Free for Singaporeans and permanent residents, $20 (standard) and $15 (concession) for foreigners Info: The Storytellers at Confluence Art Space Singaporean artist Wee Kong Chai's The Storyteller (1961) is on show at Confluence Art Space. PHOTO: CONFLUENCE ART SPACE Few can name a female pioneer artist in Singapore's art history who is not Georgette Chen. A small exhibition offers an opportunity to view a work by Sun Yee (1919 to 2010 ), t he former head of the Singapore Academy of Arts, and the impact she had on four of her students. Like her Nanyang artist peers, Sun Yee blended Chinese and Western techniques in her art. She is represented in the exhibition by Cathedral (1960s), in which she depicts modern automobiles and horse-drawn carriages cross in front of a towering cathedral. Mr Goh Chee Keong, director of Confluence Art Space, says of Sun Yee: 'Her French training may have likely inspired some of her students such as Wee Kong Chai and Yeo Kim Seng to pursue further studies in Paris.' The late artist Wee, one of her students at the academy , vividly captures the drama of ordinary life in his oil paintings – be it of a street storytelling scene or of workers at a charcoal factory in Tanjong Rhu. Dim hues of yellow and blue cast his crowded scenes in a melancholic glow, reminiscent of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh's palette. If one finds The Storyteller (1961) familiar, it is because a sister piece from 1962 now hangs in the National Gallery Singapore's revampe d art history exhibit Singapore Stori es. Works by Eng Siak Loy and Tong Chin Sye are also on show. Where: Confluence Art Space, 02-29 Havelock 2, 2 Havelock Road MRT: Chinatown When: May 9 to 25, 1 to 6pm (Wednesdays to Sundays); other days, including public holidays, by appointment only Admission: Free Info: Cultural Extravaganza Ding Yi Music Company is presenting The Last Episode, which spotlights vanishing trades, such as lion dance head-making and Malay songkok crafting through Chinese chamber music, at the Cultural Extravaganza. PHOTO: DING YI MUSIC COMPANY The Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre's (SCCC) annual festival of Chinese arts is back from May 9 to June 7, with a range of shows examining themes of cultural fusion. Nine Years Theatre's Home Kitchen (May 10, 11, 17 and 18), written and directed by Nelson Chia, stages a father-son rivalry within a three-generation Teochew restaurant business. While chef Lau Dua Gim believes in preserving the tradition of old Teochew cooking, his Paris-trained son believes that old ways have to evolve. Dance Ensemble Singapore also brings its own brand of fusion with Intersections (May 16 to 18), a multisensory dance experience that blends arts forms such as Cantonese opera, music, theatre, multimedia art, Peranakan fashion, photography, wayang kulit and calligraphy. Music lovers can look forward to the Singapore National Youth Chinese Orchestra Alumni Concert Reunion 3.0 (May 31), which will showcase how Chinese music can embrace global influences while maintaining its essence. The repertoire includes a performance of a Studio Ghibli soundtrack. Ding Yi Music Company is presenting The Last Episode (June 6 and 7), which spotlights vanishing trades such as lion dance head-making and Malay songkok crafting through Chinese chamber music. Where: Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, 1 Straits Boulevard MRT: Shenton Way When: May 9 to June 7, various timings Admission: Free and ticketed Info: Go to for a full list of events Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
