LOT 84
Dzulkifli Buyong
B. Kuala Lumpur, 1948-2004
Untitled, 1982
Signed and dated “DB82” on lower right
Acrylic on board
59 x 42 cm
RM 22,000 – RM 35,000
Dzulkifli Buyong received his art education at the Victoria Institution from 1961 to 1965, studying under V.I.’s well-known artist and art teacher, Patrick Ng, and was a regular member of the Wednesday Art Group.
Before he was nineteen years of age, he had already been exhibiting publicly and had won many prizes. Hailed as a prodigy, he was regarded as a teenage sensation of the Malaysian art scene and the darling of the Kuala Lumpur art circles.
Dzulkifli describes himself: “I like to paint children, colourful games, and subjective paintings about my surroundings. Beauty is not important. Better common things that other people don’t see. Everyday happenings, children particularly, their gaiety and liveliness.” In her biographical note on Dzulkifli, Dolores Wharton adds to the observation: “Dzulkifli’s work is part of the community. Neighbours and children enjoy posing for him while he sketches.”
Another art critic describes Dzulkifli as “…an exceptional presence, almost a freak, resistant to any attempt to squeeze him into unilinear historical schemes employed to account for modern Malaysian art.
“It is evident that he is clear-sighted in his thoughts, purposeful in his practice and decisive in aesthetic preference. …He aims at depicting the vivacity, particularly of everyday life which, he correctly observes, tends to be ignored or neglected. Dzulkifli’s ‘surroundings’ are peopled and shaped by children; he digs deep into the domain of children, especially into the realm of play; he also dredges events and memories from his own children. What he constructs in his pictures is an intense, absorbing world nourished by experience as well as an objective yet empathetic observation of his environment…”