Sunday, July 3, 2016

Sidharta Fine Art Auction 22 May 2016: Artworks by Lee Man Fong



Artworks by Lee Man Fong
(lots #102 to 104)

The following three lots feature four artworks by Lee Man Fong dating from as early as 1940. The pieces show that he was a versatile artist who was not only capable of working with various media, including water color, pastels as well as ink, on paper, but also different aesthetic genres or styles.



[#103]
This lot includes two works by Lee Man Fong. The main image is a pastels on paper piece depicting two women, one combing the hair of the other, dating from 1948. On the reverse of this work, is a pastel portrait of a man, dating from 1940.  The piece provides evidence that the artist used the reverse of the earlier artwork for the later work. Further study might be able to reveal the artist's frame of mind when he decided to do this, and make us understand better the life and thoughts of artists during that time.



[#104]
This unique artwork depicting three Balinese women interacting on a porch of a house, was actually painted in Amsterdam in 1948 and therefore most likely was painted entirely from memory. In 1946, at the time of the Indonesian revolutionary struggle for Independence,  the Netherlands Indies Lieutenant Governor General Van Mook granted the artist a Malino Scholarship, which sent him to study art in Amsterdam. There, for a brief period of time, he experimented with deformation of figures, and this piece is one of its few examples.




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