Lot 1 | Auction XXXVII

 

 

LOT 1

ISMAIL ABDUL LATIFF

B.Melaka, 1955

Lempunai No.3, 2002

Signed “Ismail Latiff” on lower middle

Acrylic on paper

28 x 28 cm

Provenance Private Collection, Kuala Lumpur

RM 300 – RM 700

 

This venerable man has been described as ‘one of the greatest escape artists ever to wield the brush’. His realm is of the enchanted and the enchanting, a utopian world built on love, beauty, purity and power. Ismail’s works reflect a combination of movement and mythology. For Ismail, he only sees himself as a traveller who embarked on a conquest to bring the inner space, texture, colour and beauty of the natural world together and interpret them onto paper and canvas. Art, as he perceived, is life and one of the best introductions to art is nature. To put his remarkable paintings into words would be to take away the spark of life from his work, a necessary evil, to convey the brilliance of his work.