Lim Tze Peng

Lim Tze Peng (b. 28 September 1923, Singapore - present), artist, winner of the Cultural Medallion in 2003, first established his art practice in the early 1950s with a series of oil paintings on Chinese junks. He is best known for the significant number of Chinese ink drawings and paintings of Chinatown and the Singapore River he produced during the early 1980s when urban redevelopment focused on these two areas. Having a solid foundation in Chinese philosophy, art and culture, Lim also practised Chinese calligraphy, especially in the 1990s. 

In 2009, Lim Tze Peng had his solo exhibition in the prestigious Beijing and Shanghai Art Museum.

Even though Lim was born and educated in Singapore, his diligent studies and daily dedication to practising his craft enabled him to excel in the Chinese ink tradition. His new ink works are deeply rooted in tradition, yet they have a palpably contemporary feel, and can be enjoyed by those who are schooled in other traditions.

Lim shows that Singapore’s multi-cultural environment may provide a context in which artists can respond to a variety of influences without being rapped in a defensive form of traditionalism or a superficial form of cosmopolitanism.

Lim’s creative impulses for his new works is clear, where previously it was “I see and I paint, now it’s I reflect and I paint". His latest series of calligraphic works reveal a new level of artistic maturity - their raw energy reflect an aggressive swiftness and decisive ferocity, injecting the calligraphy with an invigorating tension.