작품 상세

In Asian communities, mountains and hills with its luscious cloak of dense vegetation are imbued with spiritual forces, with the epitome of the sacred Mount Meru. Living amidst such congenial environs represents an achievement of abundance and spirit, with its vantage view, what with an affinity with beauteous Nature. Datuk Ibrahim Hussein’s Hillview is a landscape with naturally architectonic dome, with sinewy woolly lines intertwining in propitious rainbow spectrum and demarcations amidst the upper crust, against a fern-green sky backdrop. The shape within imperceptibly morphs into what can be discerned as a pohon hayat (tree of life). It’s an ideal of a paradise, with the robust lines threading and weaving, or curling like cats within its own cell, or moving inexorably in antithetical directions or motions, sometimes framed by distended ovals or domes in membranous colour. Everything is throbbing in relentless activity in this hilly terrain in an elixir of joie de vivre. The music of the soul throbs with the songs of the earth in Datuk Ibrahim’s magical crochet. With awards like the Crystal Award, participation in the hugely prestigious Venice Biennale in 1970, what with a tripartite exhibition in Kuwait in 1977 with Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, Datuk Ibrahim Hussein is incontrovertibly Malaysia’s most internationally iconic artist. Tutelage at Byam Shaw followed by the Royal Academy in London burnished his credentials like no other. Malaysia’s National Art Gallery accorded Datuk Ibrahim a Retrospective, followed with great fanfare, in 1986. A triple Datuk and awards such as the Anugerah Tokoh Terbilang (2007), the Japan Foundation Cultural Award (1988), the Order of Andres Bello of Venezuela (1993) and the Order of Bernardo O’ Higgins of Chile (1996) made him an artist extraordinaire. He was also a visionary, setting up the Ibrahim Hussein Museum and Cultural Foundation in Langkawi in 2000 and celebrated it with the Langkawi International Festival of Arts. He also organised the Club Mediterranee Asian Arts Festival in Cherating (Pahang) and Bali.