Image size: 26 x 36 cm
Latiff Mohidin, born in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia in 1941 completed his primary education in Singapore. While in Singapore, at an early age, Latiff’s precocity in understanding paintings earned him the nickname, ‘Wonder Boy’. From 1960-1964, Latiff studied art at Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Berlin, Germany and did brief residencies in Paris and New York. Inspired by his exploration of Southeast Asia in 1964, Latiff has since produced compelling series of artworks – the result of a synthesis between his European experience and the rediscovery of his homeland. He is also a poet who has published several volumes of poetry. The Samarkhan series stems from Latiff’s brief trip to Samarkand, the second-largest city in Uzbekistan renown for its historical and majestic architecture. In ‘Samarkhan (1)’, the forms, in bold and swift strokes of the brush, seem to depict the movement of the iconic architecture in Samarkand. The transformation from a static to a quivered form resembles the monochromatic representation which Latiff produced in ‘Guilin (11)’ – in a search for an intersection between the influence of Abstract Expressionism and the essence of Chinese ink painting.
