076

EXHIBITED
Yang Terutama, National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 14 March - 24 April 2011.

An early pastel work dated 1967, Tidurlah Anakku is one of Dzulkifli Buyong’s boldest compositions. Buyong had produced some of the most nostalgic pictures of children at play in the rural home surroundings. One of the stars in the Wednesday Art Group, he did not received formal art training, but was able to render his subjects with remarkable sensitivity and instinct. It is widely believed that Buyong’s early pastels had retained his untarnished innocence and thus form the zenith of his oeuvre. Works on paper by the artist are extremely hard to come by as Buyong had started painting on canvas upon returning from Japan. From the esteemed collection of Dato’ Param, Tidurlah Anakku was exhibited at the Yang Terutama exhibition at National Art Gallery in Kuala Lumpur last year.

A self-taught artist, Buyong was acknowledged as a child prodigy when he produced some of his famous paintings at a very young age of 16. Then he had already won numerous awards including gold medals from the then Raja Permaisuri Agong, Tengku Budriah Tengku Ismail and Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj for “The Best Overall Entry” during the Young Artists Contemporaries competition. He was mentored by Patrick Ng Kah Onn at Victoria Institution, Kuala Lumpur and had informal art training in Japan for three years in the late 1960s.