Lee Man Fong (Indonesian, 1913-1988) was a Chinese-Indonesian painter recognised for his use of Chinese brush traditions with Western oil painting techniques. Born in Guangzhou, he moved to Singapore as a child before relocating to Batavia in 1932. After his father’s death, he supported his family through commercial illustration while developing his painting practice. His early training was shaped by the Lingnan school of painting, known for modernising Chinese ink traditions, which he later combined with European oil techniques. This synthesis of East and West placed him within the broader Nanyang style, a regional modernist movement where overseas Chinese artists fused traditional Chinese aesthetics with Western media and Southeast Asian subjects.
In 1946, Lee Man Fong received a Dutch government scholarship and lived in the Netherlands for several years, exhibiting widely before returning to Indonesia in 1952. By the mid-1950s, he had become a prominent cultural figure, eventually appointed as official painter to President Sukarno and later serving as curator of the Presidential Palace art collection. His work ranged from portraits and street scenes to depictions of everyday life in Indonesia, all characterised by a disciplined sense of composition and a restrained, lyrical palette.
