Happy Birthday, Bruddah Iz! | Honolulu Museum of Art Blog

Israel Ka‘ano‘i Kamakawiwo‘ole, born on Might 20, 1959, was an envoy of aloha and Hawaiian music to the world. Sadly, he handed away in June 1997 on the age of 38. In observance of Bruddah Iz’s birthday, we’re highlighting a portrait of him by Yan Pei-Ming, who created this portray a couple of months after IZ’s dying as an artist-in-residence for the Crossings ‘97: France/Hawaii state-wide exhibition. This dynamically gestural portrait of IZ with closed eyes suggests a dying masks, portraying the depth of emotion and feeling expressed by way of the singer’s exceptional voice.

As a Chinese language émigré primarily based in France, Yan Pei-Ming is related to the Chinese language New Wave artwork motion, which gained momentum within the mid-Nineteen Eighties in Europe and the USA. He’s finest recognized for monumental portraits of figures, together with Mao Zedong, Bruce Lee, and Pope John Paul II. Hanging for his or her association of sweeping gestures with thick, visceral paint, his work usually keep a stability between abstraction and figuration, echoing the identical concern of Neo-Expressionist painters in Germany and the USA.

– E. Tory Laitila, Curator of Textiles and Vogue