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EXHIBITED
Salon Malaysia, National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 1979.

This early Inderaputra on Anuar Rashid’s mythical, fantastical realm seems softer and gentler, with a more vibrant sheen than the artworks unveiled in his grand showcase of the series Wind, Water and Fire, his sixth solo exhibition, at Hotel Equatorial, Kuala Lumpur in 1982. His fable about destruction, rebirth and power of the infinite and eternal glory has captured the imagination of many. He called this ‘a personal abstract manifestation between me and my Creator’. He revealed: “I am interested in the ambiguity of space and form.”

In 1979, Anuar Rashid had a one-man show at Alpha Gallery in Singapore, then partly owned by artist Khoo Sui Hoe. It was at Sui Hoe’s Penang gallery, Alpha Utara Gallery, that Anuar Rashid staged his comeback exhibition called Phatanum (Genesis) in 2006, after a 20-year hiatus from the art scene.

Anuar Rashid came into the art scene winning the Minor Award in the 1979 Salon Malaysia after graduating from the MARA Institute of Technology the same year. He won the Starr Foundation award to visit the United States in 1986. In 1984, he won the French Government fellowship and the Swiss Stiftung Helvetica Award. For almost 30 years, Anuar traveled the world, making himself known among European collectors and art critics. Having travelled extensively all over Europe from 1983 to 1986, he had held solo exhibitions in Ferrara (Italy) in 1983, London and Rumania in 1984 and was a guest artist at the Josep Broz Tito Gallery in Yugoslavia.