A discernible core of diagonal from the bottom left to the top right and vice versa brings together inconspicuous shapes marked by spots of radiant red in short orphaned lines, hard-edged entities or blobs. This creates the tension or triggers in a serene topography of blues of different shades. Amidst the spatial ambiguity and disparate objects, if at all and somehow related or synced, it is an excursion into the soul. It’s a breezy rumbling-rolling lark drawn by the patterning shifts of the rhythmic pulsating parallel lines that Datuk Ibrahim Hussein had arrogated as his trademark. Done in 1997, the year Ib, as the artist is better known, won the World Economic Forum’s hugely prestigious Crystal Award in the Swiss Alpine Davos, this work must have come after the annual January award ceremony. Certainly, one of the most extraordinarily gifted and iconic of Malaysian artists, Datuk Ibrahim Hussein boasts of several international accolades, the most prestigious of which is the Crystal Award, in 1997, presented by the World Economic Forum. He was also awarded 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) and Malaysia’s Anugerah Tokoh Terbilang (2007). But it was in 1977 when he was invited for the tripartite exhibition that also featured Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, in Kuwait, that catapulted him onto the big world stage. Ib was also the first Malaysian artist to have featured in the Venice Biennale in 1970, under the American Smithsonian Institute. On his own terms, he finally accepted a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, in 1986. He organised the first, and most successful, Langkawi International Festival of Arts in 2000, after setting up his museum and foundation. With the help of his muse and wife Datin Sim, he 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 (1959-1963) and the Royal Academy in London (1963-1966). A double scholarship of Fulbright and John D. Rockefeller II Fund in the 1960s saw him in the United States, with two solos in New York to boot.