Ho Ho Ying

(b. 1936, Hainan, China)

Ho Ho Ying is one of Singapore’s pioneering modern artists who tirelessly called for Singapore’s art scene to move beyond convention during the 1960s and 70s. He co-founded the influential Modern Art Society of Singapore, together with a group of artists who sought new ways to express the human condition in Singapore, entering new depths in thought and emotion through the fresh forms of modernism. Having grown up in the context of an underprivileged background and faced tragedy in the family at a young age, Ho is no stranger to the profound breadth of human emotion.

Though he was trained in traditions of Chinese calligraphy as a young student, he was later on moved by figures of Western modernism upon learning their works through art publications. Ho was particularly enamored by abstract-expressionist Jackson Pollock, whose influence can instantly be detected in Ho’s deeply expressive abstract works. Possessing spontaneous, graceful strokes and dramatic interplays of colours and textures, Ho’s paintings evoke a complex, ever-evolving interiority that could not otherwise be expressed through traditional representation.