LOT 1
ABDUL LATIFF MOHIDIN
B. N. Sembilan, 1941
Blue Pago Pago – New York, 1969
Mixed media on paper
16 x 16 cm
Private Collection, Kuala Lumpur
Signed “Latiff” , titled and dated on bottom edge of artwork
RM 22,000 – 40,000
Born in 1941, Latiff started painting at an early age and by 10 he was holding his first exhibition at Kota Raja Malay School in Singapore, and was dubbed in the local press as the “boy wonder”. He is well-known as a poet as well. He was trained in art at Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Germany, Atelier La Courriere in France and Pratt Graphic Centre in America. Among the honours and awards he has received are the Salon Malaysia’s 1968 second prize in Graphic Design and the Malaysian Literary Awards for four years in a row, the National Literary Award in 1984 and 1986 and the Southeast Asian Writers Award in 1984 for writing the tests of time and change, an entity that symbolises growth and a sense of continuity across space and time.
‘Pago Pago’ is a term coined by Malaysian artist-poet Latiff Mohidin during the late 1950s to describe the cosmopolitan yet regionally rooted spirit with which he made art. Pago-Pago traces a formative period of Latiff’s practice as he journeyed across Europe and Southeast Asia. The historical backdrop of the series started in the early 1960s, when Latiff began his formal art education at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in West Berlin. “Pago-Pago” emerged from the word “pagoden“, which was the source of his inspiration when he encountered a series of Thai and Khmer relics resembling pagoda forms at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, located in Dahlem, in 1961.