What is most unusual is the way Datuk Ibrahim signed the work, with just 'Ib', his sobriquet and popularly identified tag, and with a brush too. The work, believed to have been originally owned by a top-ranking British personage in Malaya but back living in Britain then, was sold by a top auction house in Hong Kong. An interesting selling point of this work would be the unusual Ib signature, as he usually signed his canvas in his name in full. Datuk Ibrahim Hussein is world-class based on three major accolades. 1) He was given the global Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum in 1997; 2) He was the first Malaysian to have taken part in the Venice Biennale under the Smithsonian Institute Workshop programme in 1970; 3) He was chosen together with Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali in a best-of-the-world tripartite exhibition in Kuwait in 1977. Other international awards include 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 the XVIII Prix International D'Art Contemporain de Monte Carlo (1984). On the local front, he was accorded a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery in 1986, awarded the Anugerah Tokoh Melayu Terbilang (2007) and had been conferred the Datuk title three times. He organised the first, and most successful, Langkawi International Festival of Arts in 2000, after setting up his museum and foundation (2000) in Langkawi. With the help of his wife, Sim, he organised the Club Mediterranee Asian Arts Festival in Cherating (Pahang) in 1988 and Bali (Indonesia) in 1987. Ib had his art tutelage at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting and the Royal Academy in London (1963-1966). He also received a double scholarship of Fulbright and John D. Rockefeller II Fund that saw him in the United States, with two solos in New York to boot.