Latiff Mohidin, born in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia in 1941 completed his primary education in Singapore. While in Singapore, at an early age, Latiff’s precocity in understanding paintings earned him the nickname, ‘Wonder Boy’. From 1960-1964, Latiff studied art at Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Berlin, Germany and did brief residencies in Paris and New York. Inspired by his exploration of Southeast Asia in 1964, Latiff has since produced compelling series of artworks – the result of a synthesis between his European experience and the rediscovery of his homeland. He is also a poet who has published several volumes of poetry. In the final year of the Pago-Pago series, 1969, ‘Pago-Pago (Metamorphosis)’ was produced – a painting that appears to have exhausted the five continuous years of virility and integrity that have materialized in a compelling body of work. The familiar lines, strokes and organic shapes, symbolical of Pago-Pago which Latiff had employed, are now blurred into multiple images, doubled, tripled and quadrapled to an abstraction of rhythm and movement. As it is also aptly titled, ‘Pago-Pago (Metamorphosis)’ not only culminates the monumental Pago-pago series, its symptoms pave the way for another series of work which emerged in the mid-1980s – the Gelombang series.
