Lai Kui Fang

Lai Kui Fang (; born 1936) is a Singaporean artist who studied on a French Government scholarship at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. Born before World War II in the late 1930s, Lai's romance with art started peculiarly in the primitive environment of forests and jungles. Because of the war, the young Lai Kui Fang could only explore with pencils and jotter paper from the village school. Lai, the son of a fruit hawker was born in Labis, Malaysia in 1936. He has two brothers as well as a younger sister. Lai is married to Lili Koh. They were classmates in France. In 1963, Lai won a government scholarship to further his studies at the "Ecole Nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts" in Paris. He specialised in figure drawing for 7 years and has achieved excellent results. Lai was then recommended by Prof. Chapelain-MIDY for 5 consecutive scholarships. In 1969, he obtained the "Diplome Superieur des Arts-Plastiques". That year, he proceeded to learn sculpture under the tutelage of Etienne Martin. Lai's devotion to art was rewarded when he was engage to research on the historical paintings at the Musée du Louvre, done by grand masters in the past, paintings like Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. His works are largely influenced by the Renaissance, Classical and by both the Dutch and French schools. In 1966, he received the 1st Gold medallist from "Salon des Artistes Francais" In 1968,the Republic of France conferred him the knight of the French Order of Arts and Letters. In 1975, he was preferred to Officer of Arts, the highest honour bestowed by the government to distinguished masters of the arts. In 1969, he won the Grand Medal of the City of Paris which was granted to him in recognition of his contributions to France. In the 15 years Lai spent in France, he won 49 prizes, including gold & silver medals, decorations gazetted Arts Awards In Singapore, he took the top prize and merit prize for the First Defence Art Competition in 1991, among 176 entries from 119 artist, in which many of them admitted they expected the winner before brushes were held.