Image size: 103 x 49.3 cm
Lee Man Fong, born in Canton (Guangzhou), China in 1913, stayed briefly in Singapore before settling in Jakarta in 1932. Studying on a Dutch scholarship from 1946 to 1952, he was one of three first-generation Indonesian painters who obtained their formal art education in the Netherlands. During those years, he travelled and exhibited widely before returning to establish Yin Hua, an artist association in Jakarta in 1955. As his reputation grew, he was made official presidential painter and chief curator of the collection in 1961 by the then President of Indonesia, Soekarno.The naturalistic ‘Dance of the Sea Dayaks’, executed in oil, demonstrates Lee’s ability to marry Western and Eastern aesthetics as the representation of the hanging branch and gnarled tree in the background, belongs distinctively to the Chinese ink painting tradition. The Sea Dayaks, more commonly known as Ibans, reside in the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah in Borneo and were renowned for their practice of headhunting.
