Lot 034
T. Selvaratnam
b. Kuala Lumpur, 1920 - d. 2008
Untitled, 1994
signed and dated ‘T. Selvaratnam May 1994’ (lower left)
oil on board
26 x 36cm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Kuala Lumpur
ESTIMATE RM 2,000 – 3,500
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People at work provided inspiration for T. Selvaratnam. The artist was interested in the movements of their tasks and expressed the simple poetry of daily life. T. Selvaratnam did not have formal training in art but was fortunate to be apprenticed under India’s N.N. Nambiar, who was stranded in Malaya during the Japanese Occupation from 1942 to 1945. He learnt from Nambiar mainly portraits in oil. His other sources were informal lessons in sculpture under Anthony Gray, and the odd evening classes at the Stanhope Institute and the Hammersmith College of Art, London, in 1966 when studying transport management in London.
Selvaratnam lectured at the Mara Institute of Technology from 1975 to 1986, after retiring from the Malayan Railway as chief administrative officer and secretary of the Railway Board (1946-1975). He had solos at the Creative Centre in 1991, Maybank Art Gallery in 1994 and 1996, as well as The Art Gallery, Penang in 1995. He became a fulltime artist in 1988. Before that, he took part in group shows of the Selangor Art Society and the Malayan Arts Council during the 1950s and 1960s. Writing in The New Straits Times (July 11, 1994) on his 1994 solo, Ooi Kok Chuen remarked: “His works are almost always clean, neat and compositionally and texturally balanced with an inclination for balance, harmony and symmetry — the smooth even layers of paint, the ‘clinical’ touch-ups, the cohesive lines and forms of his sculptures — a fount of symmetry and grace.” |
