Lot 122
Tan Tong
b. Selangor, 1942 - d. 2013
MT. W - 2, 2004
signed and dated on the reverse
mixed media on canvas
120 x 100cm
PROVENANCE
Private collection, Selangor
ESTIMATE RM 20,000 – 40,000
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The portraits of the voluptuous Marie-Therese Walter brought strong feminine and sensual elements to Picasso’s Cubism straightjacket, and especially so after his domineering first wife, a former Russian ballerina, Olga. Picasso’s tempestuous affair with the blonde Walter, then a 17-year-old Lolita, mainly at Picasso’s Chateau Bousgeloup in Normandy, saw a flowering of works in paintings, prints (Vollard Suite) and sculptures, with Walter shown with misshapen bulbous nose. Tan Tong had made an obverse image, differently coloured denoting Night and Day, and infusing them with Yin-Yang Tao symbolism and his ‘Thousand-Eye (Buddha Eye)’ repertoire. Walter, like the sex vixen of Chinese antiquity, Yang Kwei-fei, are two of Tan Tong’s favourites as the femme fatale, and this homage with the ribboned hat and striped bodice is based on the portrait in Picasso Museum in Paris, which Tan Tong visited again in 2002 (he was to visit Paris three more times), which saw effusive colours in all its Pop gaiety.
Tan Tong, artist-printmaker-art thinker, is one of Malaysia’s most flamboyant French-trained artists with a struggle to boot. He was doubly given major exhibitions by Soka Gakkai Malaysia (SGM), his Retrospective called Homage To Tan Tong: His Life And Times (2011-2012) and Tan Tong: Homage to Picasso (2006). Tan Tong was given a French Government scholarship to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts (ENSBA) in Paris (1964-1969), and he followed up with a double diploma in Painting and Drawing in 1974-1975, which is marked by his winning the Fondation Rocheron Award at ENSBA. He also studied French literature at the University of Bordeaux. In 1991, Tan Tong won a Consolation Prize for Painting at the National Art Gallery’s Salon Malaysia. He had 17 solos since his first at the Foyer des Artistes Galerie, Montparnasse Paris in 1967. His other overseas solos were in Singapore, at the Meyer Gallery in 1970 and the Notices Gallery in 1993. His first local solo was at the Samat Art Gallery in 1970. He taught at the Malaysian Institute of Art for 26 years, retiring as Head of the Department of Art and Design in 2002. |