Painting and Sculpture
Chua Mia Tee
Chua Mia Tee (25 November 1931 – 10 July 2026) was a Chinese-born Singaporean artist known for his social realist oil paintings capturing the social and political conditions of Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s and 1960s. Chua was involved in the Equator Art Society, an artist group founded in 1956 whose social realist works sought to instil a distinct Malayan consciousness by representing the realities and struggles of the masses. For his contributions to the visual arts in Singapore, Chua was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 2015. Chua was also known for his depictions of historic events and portrait paintings of prominent Singaporeans and political figures, such as the nation's presidents and ministers. This includes, for instance, a sculpted bust of composer Zubir Said, and Chua's 1998 portrait of Singapore's first president Yusof Ishak, which is reproduced on Singaporean banknotes. His work had been exhibited internationally in countries such as Australia, Belgium, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Thailand, and his paintings are in the collection of the National Gallery Singapore, including his most notable work, National Language Class (1959).
Also on this shelf
His Last Return from Duty.
Las Meninas.
See also
Uncatalogued shelfText from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.