작품 상세

It may well be the Malay version of the ‘Reclining Maya’ but for Khalil Ibrahim, this work is significant on many counts. For an accidental artist in backwaters Temerloh, Pahang, more used to watercolours – the only affordable medium to him then to be transplanted into England, where he was studying at the St Martin’s School of Art (on Pahang Government scholarship), Khalil had experimented and explored the nude (Culture Shock?) in a new ‘Pop’ and contemporary treatment and setting. This could have to do with the Malay-Muslim ‘kehalusan’ (grace/refinement) but at this time, 1964, Khalil was experimenting with abstract in a novel way (See his Deconstruction), he was well trained and his technique had shown maturity since he set foot in London in September 1959. The female nude, face just a brushstroke and half-covered and with ample breasts, takes up the central space right across, and is rendered with subdued tonal qualities. She seems placed on a ‘divan’ of beach rock. A lone slightly slouching long-haired figure of indeterminant sex is looking out, apparently at the sea with the small triangular blue strip on the top right. One of the best southpaws in Malaysian art, Khalil Ibrahim was sent on a Pahang government scholarship to study art at the St Martin’s School of Art and Design in London in 1959-64, for his National Diploma in Design. He was already 30 when he graduated. He spent another year for his post-graduate in 1965. After a very brief teaching stint on his return, he was released from his bond, and he decided to turn full time, and he has been painting fulltime since 1966. But a stroke in 2012 had put a brake to his career. In 1970, he was given his first solo at the Samat Art Gallery, of his batiks and watercolours, and he also had a solo exhibition in Indonesia that year. Khalil was a co-founder of the Malaysian Watercolour Society and rose to vice-president once. His two main exhibitions so far were ‘Khalil Ibrahim: The Art Journey’ at the KL Art Space, Petaling Jaya (2015), and ‘Khalil Ibrahim: A Continued Dialogue,’ at Galeri Petronas in 2004.