September 26, 2025
JAKARTA – The late artist Liu Kang’s trip from Singapore to the newly independent Indonesia is captured in Bali 1952: Through the Lens of Liu Kang, featuring his photographs, sketches and letters to his wife.
Liu Kang, born in Fujian, China, on April 1, 1911, was a prominent Singaporean artist and cultural figure. He attended Jinan University and the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts in China, as well as the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in France, before settling in Singapore in 1942.
He was known for developing the Nanyang Style and cofounding the Singapore Art Society. For his contributions, Liu Kang received the Bintang Bakti Masyarakat (Public Service Star) in 1970 and the Pingat Jasa Gemilang (Meritorious Service Medal) in 1996. He died of natural causes on June 1, 2004.
In June 1952, he traveled to Indonesia with three fellow artists, namely Chen Wen Hsi, Chen Chong Swee and Cheong Soo Pieng, on a seven-week sketching journey in search of inspiration on the Island of the Gods.
The journey resulted in a critically acclaimed exhibition the following year, titled Bali, which showcased more than 100 paintings and marked a milestone in Singapore’s art history.
The details of the trip came to light after Liu Kang’s daughter-in-law, Gretchen Liu, found negative films inside a shoebox in his study one afternoon in March 2016. She brought the box home but did not reopen it until the COVID-19 lockdown four years later.
Using other archives, including diaries, letters and oral history interviews in the National Archives of Singapore, Gretchen has reconstructed the story of Liu Kang’s adventure in Bali 1952: Through the Lens of Liu Kang, published by the National Library Board Singapore.
“As I pieced together the story of the trip, I felt an irresistible urge to see whether it was possible to connect photographs with the art that was created during the trip or shortly after,” Gretchen wrote in the book.
The book features at least 250 black-and-white photographs selected from more than 1,000 images, most of which have never been published.
Time capsule
Visiting Indonesia in 1952, seven years after its declaration of independence and just two years after the wars against recolonization ended, Liu Kang witnessed the nation’s situation at the time.
Through his lens, Liu Kang captured bustling streets, crowded markets and fragments of daily life in the cities he passed through, Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya, before finally arriving in Bali.
One series of photographs shows women bathing and washing clothes by the canal on Jl. Hayam Wuruk, Jakarta, on June 13, 1952. Built in the 17th century under the leadership of Chinese captain Phoa Beng Gan to drain Batavia’s swamps, the canal was known in colonial times as Molenvliet.
Liu Kang took 14 photos of the scene before visiting the home of his old friend, painter Lee Man Fong. Lee was still in Europe at the time, but Liu Kang was welcomed by Lee’s wife, who showed him her husband’s work.
“We were doing life-sketching in Jakarta and later in Bandung. I asked my cousin in Surabaya whether he had friends there,” Liu Kang wrote in his diary. “When we reached Surabaya, we met Lie Tjek Kiong, proprietor of an ironware business, who unexpectedly was an avid painting enthusiast.”
During his trip, Liu Kang stayed at the Oranje Hotel (now Hotel Majapahit) in Surabaya on June 19, after a 13-hour train ride from Jakarta. He snapped a photo of the building, a national landmark where a pivotal event occurred when Indonesian revolutionaries tore down the Dutch flag, sparking the Battle of Surabaya.
When the group finally arrived in Bali, their main destination, Liu Kang was struck by the island’s cultural richness. In Buleleng, they visited Pura Meduwe Karang, their first encounter with Balinese temple architecture, with its carved Ramayana figures and the ornate floral style typical of North Bali. In Sukawati, Gianyar, they witnessed a religious procession “stretching about 500 meters,” with villagers clad in “bright and lavish” costumes.
Liu Kang also met some of Bali’s most prominent artists, including dancers Cokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, I Wayan Rindi and Ni Pollok, wife of Belgian painter Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres. Through Le Mayeur, Liu Kang was introduced to Ni Ketut Reneng, a Balinese dance maestro who hosted a life-drawing session at her home.
Gretchen structured the book chronologically, from Liu Kang’s arrival in Jakarta to his return to Singapore. It includes an itinerary of meetings with old friends, encounters with local artists and explorations of the surrounding area. As the publisher describes, the book is “a time capsule of Indonesian history.”
With detailed captions noting dates, Liu Kang’s impressions and the wider context of the 1950s, the book also serves as a valuable resource for researchers studying everyday life in the past.
“The images reveal how labor-intensive life was in the middle of the 20th century,” Gretchen said in the book.
Indonesian photographer and writer Rio Helmi praised the book as “a refreshing change to see such a historically important visual record of Bali documented by an Asian artist and photographer during its postcolonial era. A must-have for all those who have a connection to this island.”
Intimates
The book includes nine of Liu Kang’s letters, with the first written on June 9, 1952, to confirm his safe arrival in Jakarta and to share his plan to visit the Bogor Botanical Gardens in West Java.
In a second letter, sent on June 14, 1952, Liu Kang described his impressions of the oldest botanical garden in Southeast Asia, where he marveled at the enormous Victoria amazonica water lilies.
Other letters touch on the weather, similar to Singapore’s, as well as on restaurants and meals, whether unusual or delicious, and on bookstores and museums, which he noted were larger than those in Singapore.
On June 23, 1952, Liu Kang wrote to his wife, affectionately called Pingmei, confessing that while he enjoyed the trip, he felt uneasy realizing he had never taken her outside Singapore.
“You have never seen what Penang and Kuala Lumpur actually look like. This is truly the greatest regret for me as your lifelong partner! I have made up my mind to go traveling with you someday, no matter what,” he told her in the letter.
Liu Kang’s correspondence with his wife adds a layer of sentimentality that connects readers to the artist beyond his public legacy.