The year 1964 belongs to a phase when Ibrahim Hussein, later a Datuk, painted on paper using gouache, the work often laid on magazine pages (on card) for greater durability. Works such as Just For You and Together, sold in the Henry Butcher past auctions. The 1964 pedigree also connects others like Assembly of Figures, Les Hommes, Firebird, Man and Zoo and Machination. Only this must be the smallest of the genre, which can go up to 46.5 x 33.5cm format. It is also a phase when Ibrahim started coalescing human forms into centrifugal organic blobs on a loosely geometric backdrop. London art critic Charles Spencer described it as “giving the impression of movements and power.” This was after his Octopi series based on octopoid shapes. It has not developed yet into his printage stage, that was in 1967. Extraordinarily gifted, Datuk Ibrahim Hussein is world-class as an artist. Who could forget his My Father And The Astronaut and May 13, among others. He was given the World Economic Forum Crystal Award, chosen to feature with Andy World and Salvador Dali in the best-of-the-world exhibition in Kuwait, first Malaysian featured in the Venice Biennale. His 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). As early as 1984, his promise was heralded with the XVIII Prix International D’Art Contemporain de Monte Carlo prize. At home, he was accorded a Retrospective by the National Art Gallery in 1986, awarded the Anugerah Tokoh Melayu Terbilang (2007) and was 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 muse and wife Datin Sim, he organised the Club Mediterranee Asian Arts Festival in Cherating (Pahang) and Bali (Indonesia). Ibrahim first studied at Byam Shaw and then the Royal Academy in London. He then got 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. All these from an artist blinded in one eye (right) when small.