Chia Yu Chian comes off inadvertently as the champion of the impoverished and downtrodden, and in his Hospital Series, the weak and infirmed. His art was Social Realism, on the common people, especially around his Selangor Mansion apartment cum gallery in Jalan Masjid India, which he captured with great compassion and perceptiveness. But he is best remembered for his Parisien oeuvre when he studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, in an extended stay from 1959 to 1963 - the first Malayan / Singaporean to be given a French Government scholarship. He had stayed at the bohemian Montmartre, at the Rue de la Charbonnière (District 8) and also at the Latin Quarters of Sorbonne in Paris. The National Art Gallery Malaysia has several of his Parisien rooftop topography, although his most memorable masterpiece is Election Fever (1978). His mentor, the renowned French art educator Professor M. Chaplain Midy, described him as "a painstaking, hardworking and exceptionally promising young painter" and during his early sojourn in Singapore, Professor Michael Sullivan dubbed him "the essential Malayan artist". He had intoned: "Art must not only be imbued with beauty and colour; it must be imbued with life and spirit to reflect the mood and tempo of the times." Note: Chia Yu Chian has 13 works in the National Art Gallery Malaysia collection.