Lot 045
Mustapa Haji Ibrahim
b. Perak, 1946
Orang Orang Ogos, 1978
signed and dated (lower right)
silkscreen print on paper
43 x 64cm each (set of 2), A/P
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Kuala Lumpur
ESTIMATE RM 6,500 – 10,500
|
The naked figurines seem straight out of Zulkifli Dahalan’s (1952-1977) magnum opus, Separate Reality: One Day In A Forbidden Land (1975) except that they are all over floating in limbo, instead of on terra firma. Anak Alam members close to both had said that both were developing the figures at about the same time, so it’s difficult to ascertain who put them down on paper / canvas first, but Zulkifli’s figure types could be traced back specifically to 1972. Mustapa’s trajectory seems more on a patterning kind of thing, as he had done with his later jig-saw-like abstracts, and which in the 1970s he dubbed his Love Series.
Mustapa Ibrahim, better known as Tapa, is a founding member of the Anak Alam group which splintered from the figurative-bound Angkatan Pelukis SeMalaysia, of which he was also a member (he attended APS classes with Mazli Mat Som). Apart from art, he was also involved in poetry and theatre during the 1970s. Among his notable exhibitions are the two-man show in Medan in 1971, and the Dwi Rupa exhibition in 1996 with S. Amin Shahab, Ghaffar Ibrahim and Prof Siti Zainon Ismail. He was also selected for the Asean Modern Painting Exhibition in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1983. After his first solo at the British Council, Kuala Lumpur, in 1973, Tapa had his fourth solo at RA Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur in 2008. |