Chua Mia Tee (; born 25 November 1931) is a Chinese-born Singaporean artist known for his social realist oil paintings capturing the social and political conditions of Singapore and Malaya in the 1950s and 60s. Chua was involved in the Equator Art Society, an artist group founded in 1956 whose social realist works sought to instil a distinct Malayan consciousness by representing the realities and struggles of the masses. For his contributions to the visual arts in Singapore, Chua was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 2015. Chua is also known for his depictions of historic events and portrait paintings of prominent Singaporeans and political figures, such as the nation's presidents and ministers. This includes, for instance, a sculpted bust of composer Zubir Said, and Chua's 1998 portrait of Singapore's first president Yusof Ishak, which can be found reproduced on Singapore's currency notes. His work has been exhibited internationally in countries such as Australia, Belgium, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Thailand, and his paintings are in the collection of the National Gallery Singapore, including his most notable work, National Language Class (1959). Personal life and education Chua was born in 1931 in Shantou, Guangdong, China. In 1937, at the age of six, Chua and his family fled the Sino-Japanese War in China, coming to Singapore. For his primary education, he attended the Shuqun School and subsequently Tuan Mong School. His studies would be temporarily interrupted by the Japanese occupation of Singapore, with his family moving to Indonesia until 1945, when he returned to Singapore with the end of World War II and completed his primary school studies at Tuan Mong School in 1946. While growing up, Chua would watch his father, a self-taught painter who was a businessman, draw portraits of his grandparents, leading to Chua's discovery of his own interest in sketching and painting. While Chua enrolled in Chung Cheng High School for secondary education in 1947, he left midway to pursue a formal arts education at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), Singapore, encouraged by his father. There, academy director Lim Hak Tai and artists Cheong Soo Pieng, Koh Tong Leong and See Hiang To would be some of his teachers. Chua graduated from NAFA in 1952 and taught there as a full-time teacher for two years before returning to Chung Cheng High School to complete his secondary education. He would then return to NAFA as an art