13.03.1936–19.02.2009
Ibrahim Hussein
The Malaysian artist Ibrahim Hussein (1936–2009) grew up in a village in Kedah, studied in Singapore and London, and lived for a time in Italy and France. He worked mainly in acrylic, and gave the name “printage” to his own technique of combining printing and collage. In the 1990s he founded a museum and cultural foundation on the island of Langkawi, and from 1987 he organised meetings of Asian artists.
Biography
Ibrahim Hussein was born on 13 March 1936 in the village of Sungai Limau, in the Yan district of the Sultanate of Kedah. His father was a small trader from Aceh, and his mother came from southern Burma. Ibrahim was the fifth of six children. His two older brothers, Abdullah and Ismail Hussein, also became artists.
In 1956 he entered the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore and studied there until 1959. Then he moved to London. The sources differ on the details: by some accounts he studied at Central Saint Martins, the London college of art and design, by others at the Byam Shaw School of Art; from 1963 to 1969 he studied at the Royal Academy Schools. The London years were lean: to support himself he worked as a postman and as a film extra. A scholarship rescued him and allowed him to travel to France and Italy, and he lived in those countries for some time. His first solo exhibition took place in 1963 at the John Whibley Gallery in London, and his second in 1965 at the International Gallery in New York. His main medium became acrylic. Ibrahim Hussein also worked as a collage artist, and he called his own technique “printage”: a combination of printing and collage. His paintings, among them “Goodbye New York”, “Garuda” and “Kabuki Actor”, are built on bright, dense colour and unexpected compositional choices. I think the titles show how widely he looked at the world: New York, the mythical bird of Indonesian and Malay legend, and Japanese theatre stand side by side.
In 1970–1973 he was a visiting artist at the University of Malaya. Exhibitions followed one after another: in 1989 at the Takashimaya Art Gallery in Tokyo, in 1991 at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago de Chile, and in 1994 at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. He received a Fulbright scholarship, a prize at the 18th International Art Competition in Monte Carlo (1984) and a prize from the Japan Foundation (1988). Venezuela awarded him the Order of Andrés Bello (1993), and in 1995 the Supreme Ruler of Malaysia conferred on him the Order of the Defender of the Realm, with the title Datuk.
From 1987 Ibrahim Hussein was the initiator of annual workshop meetings of Asian artists. The plan for a cultural foundation and museum on Langkawi took shape in the early 1990s: the founding date is given as 1991 in some places and 1992 in others. The museum stands in the Gunung Mat Cincang area and opened about eight years later.
Ibrahim Hussein died on 19 February 2009 in Kuala Lumpur. Among those who came to pay their last respects was the prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak.
Profile notes