095

LITERATURE
Peggy Crawford, In Our Humble Opinion, Bangkok Post, September 8, 1968.
Latiff’s Retrospective, 1973, illustrated as the front endpaper.

It is incredibly rare to find such a museum-quality piece on offer. This piece entitled Pago-Pago Forms was previously owned by a member of the American diplomatic corp who was stationed in Bangkok at the time.

In response to an email enquiry, the former owner claimed to have acquired this work from a solo exhibition of Latiff’s Pago-Pago series at Trio Gallery in Phetburi Road, Bangkok. He had since taken the work with him wherever he was posted, until it was sold through Doyle New York to a Greenwich-based gallery, Abby M. Taylor Fine Art. The work was subsequently acquired by a Malaysian collector and brought back into the country.

Another significant Pago-Pago painting acquired by a high profile Malaysian diplomat from the same solo exhibition in Bangkok had recently been shown in Yang Terutama – an exhibition of selected artworks from the collections of former ambassadors – at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur.

Pago-Pago represents a great synthesis of the polyglot cultures of the region, with its own symbolic rhythms and beauty. The Pago-Pago series is widely acclaimed as Latiff’s most significant series to date, and is highly sought-after by collectors, especially since Red Night (1968) set the artist’s first auction record at Christie’s Singapore in 1994.

In terms of forms and structure, this piece with its double totemistic phalanxes seems like a great companion piece to Red Night (1968), which is currently owned by a private collector in Kuala Lumpur, as well as Two Standing Figures (1967) - currently in the collection of the National Art Gallery, Singapore.