One of the very few works dated 1964, signed only with the sobriquet ‘Ib', like Together and Untitled, which were in gouache. This was during his sojourn in New York. Obviously, at some point he must have seen or known about the Harlem Globetrotters with their basketball wizardry and comedic antics, world renowned during that era. This work was among several shown in a solo exhibition organised by the Singapore Art Society at the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce in December 1966. Ib, as Ibrahim Hussein is popularly known, had just returned from London and New York. Ib held two solos in New York in 1965, inncluding one at Galeri Internationale. A critique in the New York Herald Tribute in April commented on the "…highly interesting abstract canvases in which evocative hard-edge geometry in subdued yet rich colours provides a background for complex figurative tangles. The latter appear utterly at home in Hussein's geometry, which reflects the man-made environment of our time." The legendary Datuk Ibrahim Hussein is incontrovertibly one of Malaysia's most internationally iconic artists. He was given the prestigious Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum in 1997, and was the first Malaysian to have taken part in the Venice Biennale, under the Smithsonian Institute Workshop programme in 1970. And he was with the world's art pantheons in the tripartite exhibition in Kuwait in 1977, the other two masters being Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali. His international awards also include the XVIII Prix International D'Art Contemporain de Monte Carlo, the Order of Andres Bello of Venezuela (1993), the Order of Bernardo Higgins (Chile's highest honour to a foreigner, 1996), the Japan Foundation Cultural Award (1988), with him accorded momentous solos in Venezuela, Chile and Japan. He was accorded a retrospective by the National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur in 1986. He was conferred the Datuk title three times, and awarded the Anugerah Tokoh Melayu Terbilang (2007). He had organised the Langkawi International Festival of Arts in 2000, after setting up his museum and foundation (2000) in Langkawi. With the help of his wife Datin Sim, he had also organised the Club Mediterranee Asian Arts Festival in Cherating (Pahang) and Bali (Indonesia). Ib had his art tutelage at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting and the Royal Academy in London (1963-1966). He also received a double scholarship of Fulbright and John D. Rockefeller II Fund that saw him in the United States, with two solos in New York to boot.