작품 상세

Khalil Ibrahim's 1969 Reclining Figure is a major work done after his frenetic student-day pace in London from 1960-1965. It was a curious play and transformations of forms in shapes and colours, in organic abstracts distinct from the life studio sketches in London. It does reveal vestigial organic knots but the forms get freer and looser in a wider spectrum hemmed somewhat by a rectangle and a thick half arc. There are hints in the colours that the ‘figure,’ whether clothed or nude, is not enclosed in an interior space but seems in some al fresco ambience. And there is almost a somnambulist air about it. The ‘Reclining Figure’ is an art-historical time for the pantheons like the chacmool pre-Columbian Mesoamerican precedent and iconic stubs by Francisco Goya (Reclining Maya), Claude Manet (Olympia), Ingres (Grande Odalisque), Pablo Picasso (Reclining Nude) and Henry Moore. Khalil Ibrahim’s innate flair of anatomy clinched him 2nd Prize in Lever Brothers’s Malayan Life national art competition in 1959, that indirectly won him a Pahang State scholarship to study at the St Martin’s School of Art and Design (National Diploma in Design, 1964; and post-graduate, 1965). And since returning in September 1966, he had become a full time artist painting in batik, watercolours, acrylic, oil, pastels, pen (ink), and he had even dabbled in etchings. In 1970, he had the first double solo at Samat Art Gallery and then was invited for a solo in Indonesia. He had a retrospective of sorts celebrating 50 years of painting in A Continued Dialogue exhibition at Galeri Petronas, Kuala Lumpur, in 2004. Khalil was also actively involved in the Malaysian Watercolour Society (MWS) and was its founder member. An outstanding southpaw, he joined the MWS painting expeditions to Sweden (Simrikshawn to Uppsala) and India (New Delhi to Nainital / Jeolikot).