Artist : Thawan Duchanee
Technique : Oil on canvas
Year : 1964
Size : 86 x 189 cm

 Thawan Duchanee was one of Thailand’s most prolific Thai master artist. In 2001, he was awarded the prestigious National Artist title for painting. His signature style embodies one of the more recognisable aesthetics, from drawing to painting and sculpture. Thawan only painted what he thought was core where each detail is a part of the bigger structure.

During his time as a student at Silpakorn University in Bangkok (1957-1963) and at the Rijks Akademie van beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (1964 – 1968), Thawan’s body of work truly reflected his early journey as an artist, painting his surrounding influences whilst also documenting his visual studies. His works during the last half of the 1960s, speaks to what a graduate student would be doing, exploring the diversity of art styles that can be found in Europe; naturalism, expressionism, cubism and surrealism.

It is during this period where one can see a variety of subjects focusing on forms on Thawan’s paintings, making them a rare set of art works as after the late 1980s, the artist produced works that largely explored a singular concept of mysticism. This includes existential themes, based on ancient religion, particularly Ancient Egyptian, Hinduism and Buddhist narratives. He often painted with symbolism through zoomorphic depictions, his art played on the significance of iconography; reflecting basic human anecdotes which is an extremely approachable concept for viewers as a whole. 

Thawan’s signature brush strokes and shading are dramatic and high in contrast, common colours found in his works post 1980s are red, black and gold. After 1997, Thawan started to incorporate the human physical form body back into his works by using it to be the foundation of his expressions  where animals moved freely on the human body, swimming and circling each curves.

The artist has often expressed that he paints his own interpretation about Buddhist philosophy with the aim to bring the teachings into modernity making Monk (Kualalu) one of the earlier Buddhist references the artist has created. This exploration however brought him head to head with a group of oppositions of his art who vandalised an exhibition he showed in the last half of the 70s, leading him to claim out of furiosity to not ever show in Thailand again. 

As we can see in Monk (Kualalu), its angular finish with black bold outlines seem to be a detail the artist has kept since the beginning of his career and preferences over certain colours like black, red and yellow are also prominent. These accents can be found in his later works such as those from 2004’s Trinity exhibition held at The Queen’s Gallery in Bangkok and the famous Battle of Mara (1989).

A devout Buddhist himself, Thawan lived his life unattached to materialistic things. This is relevant to his outlook on life as an artist where he has famously denounced any description of types of art he makes by quoting; “I am not a surrealist painter, I am Thawan Duchanee”.