23.08.1943–?
Syed Thajudeen
Syed Thajudeen was born in 1943 in the village of Alagankulam in southern India and lived in Malaysia from 1954, where he became known. He paints mainly in oil: the “Ramayana” triptych (1972–1973) and the Kebaya and Malacca Sultanate series. His works are held by the National Art Gallery of Malaysia and the Singapore Art Museum.
Biography
Syed Thajudeen’s first solo exhibition took place in 1975, in two cities: Penang and Kuala Lumpur. By then he had only just returned to Malaysia from India with his diploma.
He was born on 23 August 1943 in the village of Alagankulam, near Madurai, in southern India. His full name is Syed Thajudeen Shaik Abu Talib. He moved to Malaysia in 1954, where his parents were already living in Penang, and he went to school there. To study painting he went back to India: from 1968 to 1974 he studied at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Madras and graduated with a diploma in fine arts. Among his early works from his student years is the “Ramayana” triptych, made in 1972–1973 while he was still living in Madras. Work from those years was shown at the college’s annual exhibitions. From 1974 to 1976 he taught painting at the Institut Teknologi MARA in Petaling Jaya. From 1977 until 2001 he worked in the public relations department of the United Asian Bank; in 1987 the bank changed its name to Bumiputra Commerce Bank. By other accounts, he joined the bank as its resident artist. How his duties were actually arranged, I cannot say.
He paints mainly in oil, from miniatures to mural-sized canvases. His women have elongated, almond-shaped eyes, as in the painting “Longing for Love” (1988). The colour, line and modelling of the figures recall the Indian cave paintings of Ajanta and Persian and Mughal miniatures. He named Gauguin as his favourite painter. His stylisation shows the influence of Paul Klee, who is associated with the Bauhaus, and of his Indian education, but the subjects are most often taken from Malay culture and literature: a series of women in the kebaya, and a cycle of large canvases on the Malacca Sultanate made in the 1980s. Love and women remain his favourite themes.
He has painted more than a thousand works. From 1965 he took part in group shows in London (1978), Dhaka (the 1983 biennale), Taiwan (1985), Pasadena, California (1988), Cologne (1990), Brussels (1992), Abu Dhabi (1998), Beijing (1999) and Guangdong province (2004). His paintings were shown at the World Expo in Shanghai in 2010 and at the Olympic Games art exhibition in London in 2012, and in 2015 in Busan.
His solo exhibitions have been held in Kuala Lumpur (1975, 1997, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2010, 2018), Penang (1975, 2007, 2015), Singapore (2015) and Kuantan (2024). The 2006 exhibition “Cinta Tercipta” was held at the National Art Gallery. In 2015 the Penang state government invited him to hold a retrospective at the Penang State Art Gallery and Museum, and in the same year he received the Penang State Art Gallery prize. He served on the Malaysian National Visual Arts Development Board.
Syed Thajudeen’s works are held by the National Art Gallery of Malaysia, the Singapore Art Museum, the Olympic Museum in Beijing, Galeri Petronas, the Bank Negara Museum and Art Gallery, and the museums of Penang and Pahang. His painting “Longing for Love” was used for the cover of a Russian collection of stories by Malaysian writers, “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky”, and other paintings appeared in a Russian anthology of Malaysian women’s poetry, “Flowers of Distant Shores”.
Profile notes