One of Malaysia's most celebrated artists, Mohd Yusof Ismail, or better known as Yusof Gajah, whose media ranged from paintings, murals, installations, sketches and children's picture books, died earlier today at his home in Gombak, Selangor. He was 68.
The news of his death was confirmed by Dewan Bahasa Dan Pustaka, a national literary and arts institution. A cause of death was not announced. In the past few months, he had suffered regular bouts of ill health.
Born in Johol, a small town in Negri Sembilan on Feb 10, 1954, Yusof Gajah showed a keen interest in painting and art during his early years. He also spent his schooling years in Singapore, and later went on to study art at Sekolah Seni Rupa in Yogjakarta, Indonesia in the early 1970s.
Throughout his career as a full-time artist which began in the mid-1970s in Kuala Lumpur, Yusof Gajah, a proponent of naive style paintings and folk art, was known as a person who saw the importance of making art and creativity accessible and essential to the human experience.
During that young artist period, he became part of the multi-disciplinary art collective Anak Alam, where he adopted his moniker "Yusof Gajah". In the free-flowing Anak Alam, the members blurred the boundaries between art, theatre, literature and poetry.
Yusof Gajah's beloved and colourful elephant-themed artworks, illustrations and books are seen as an all-ages staple in the Malaysian arts and culture scene. He started introducing elephant motifs to his canvas in the late 1970s, and produced his first illustration book Tiga Ekor Gajah in 1977.
His paintings, which often portrayed strong familial bonds, revealed the artist's passion in celebrating humanity as well as his lifelong fascination with Nature and man's place in it. His strong sense of social awareness, animal conservation and environmental concerns also added layers to his artworks, which looked simplistic yet held deep meaning.
Yusof Gajah was also a keen advocate of community art workshops and enjoyed developing art programmes for children. He also mentored young artists, providing them access to an established artist who was also open to new ideas.
Beyond the art gallery, which saw him exhibiting his Gajah Series, Elephantoidea Series and Mother And Child Series, Yusof Gajah also thrived as a storyteller. He wrote and illustrated a number of children's picture books.
He received numerous awards, including the Best Children's Book Illustration from the National Book Council of Malaysia and the Noma Concours Grand Prix Award (organised by the Asia Pacific Cultural Centre for Unesco biennially) in Tokyo in 1996 for his book, The Real Elephant.
Today, The Real Elephant remains a pioneering example of how a Bahasa Malaysia language book has gone international, opening the doors for Yusof Gajah's works to be translated into Japanese and Korean.
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