Image size: H40 x 30 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. During the pre-Berlin years, in the 1950s, Latiff was fond of drawing portraits. Before he made regular portraits of his neighbours and classmates, he scouted for famous personalities such as P. Ramlee and Raj Kapoor on the pages of magazines for reference. ‘Aku’ is a portrait of Chairil Anuar, a famous Indonesian poet whom Latiff referred to while he was studying at Mercantile Institution in Singapore. ‘Aku’ is regarded as a crucial artwork due to the rarity of Latiff’s oeuvres in the 1950s as all were either lost or destroyed when he left for Europe.
