Chalermchai Kositpipat

Biography

“I got complaints from everybody: from the government, from monks, from other artists,” Chalermchai Kositpipat recalled in 1998. They all said the same thing: what he was doing was not Thai art. They were talking about the London murals.

He was born on 15 February 1955 in Chiang Rai, in northern Thailand, into a family of Chinese descent: his father was an immigrant from Chaoshan, his mother a Thai Chinese. By one account he was an unwilling pupil as a child but loved drawing and tried to enter art schools; he ended up at Silpakorn University, the country’s main art school, and in 1977 took a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Thai art. That same year he won a gold medal at the Bualuang painting competition and third prize at the National Exhibition of Art. He began by painting film posters on billboards. His first murals combined traditional Buddhist temple painting with contemporary images. In 1980 he went abroad for the first time, to Sri Lanka, and stayed for six months, studying local architecture, sculpture, painting and Buddhist temples. The white statues and temples of the island made a strong impression on him. He worked closely with the Sri Lankan artist Manju Sri and held a solo exhibition at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery in Colombo; the works he brought back from it he sold in Thailand, every one. In the same year, 1980, according to some accounts, he founded and led the group Silp Thai 23, conceived as a counterweight to European and American influence.

In 1988 he was commissioned to paint murals for Wat Buddhapadipa in London. According to other accounts, the work began as early as 1984, and he painted without payment. The murals took four years, and their contemporary manner drew the complaints quoted above. In time attitudes changed, and King Bhumibol Adulyadej was among his clients. In 1995, on the king’s commission, he illustrated the monarch’s own work, “Phra Mahachanok”.

The central project of his life is Wat Rong Khun, an ornate white Buddhist temple in his home province of Chiang Rai. Work began in 1997 (by some accounts the design phase started in 1996) and is not finished. He has said: “Only death can stop my dream but cannot stop my project,” adding that the work will give him “immortal life”. The temple combines architecture, moulded sculpture and painting in the Thai tradition. Later he took on a project for a clock tower in Chiang Rai (from 2005).

In 2004 he became the first honoree of the Silpathorn Award in visual arts, given to contemporary Thai artists at mid-career. In 2011 Thailand’s National Culture Commission named him a National Artist. According to some accounts, in 2012 he received a royal decoration, and in 2016 an honorary doctorate in Thai painting.

On 30 May 2025 he resigned the title of National Artist.