''Bogalay'' Kyaw Hlaing ( my, ဘိုကလေး ကျော်လှိုင်, ; 28 September 1914 – 13 April 1996) was a Burmese artist. Due to his mastery of the technique of painting clouds, he was sometimes called "Cloudy Kyaw Hlaing".

Early life

Kyaw Hlaing was born on 28 September 1914 in Bogalay (in the present-day Ayeyarwady Region), son of wealthy parents with an interest in art. He studied art at Aid National Middle School. At the age of 18, with

Ba Kyi Ba Kyi, FRSA ( my, ဘကြည် ; 17 July 1912 – 15 April 2000) was a well-known and prolific Burmese artist. He was initially trained in western painting, but in the post-World War II independence period, he initiated a revival of Traditio ...

Aye Maung Aye Maung ( my, အေးမောင် ) is a Burmese politician and was the chairperson of the Arakan National Party, one of Myanmar's ethnic political parties. He is currently the leader of the Arakan Front Party. He is a staunch nationalist ...

and

Thein Han Thein Han ( my, သိန်းဟန်, ; 1910–1986) was a major Yangon painter of the post-World War II era who produced a number of memorable works and who had an abiding influence on the evolution of the more conservative painting styles in ...

, he became a student under the master

Ba Nyan Ba Nyan ( my, ဘဉာဏ်, ; 1897 – 12 October 1945) was a Burmese painter who has been called the greatest name in modern painting in Myanmar. His oil paintings were quiet and academic in their style, but display occasional flashes of vi ...

, who had learned European oil painting techniques in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. After the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

he entered a national painting competition, winning prizes in the still life, figure and landscape categories, and the overall gold prize. He found work as an art instructor in Bogalay, later moving to

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

where he taught in high schools for many years.

Work

Kyaw Hlaing belonged to the second generation of Burmese painters who studied under Ba Nyan in the 1930s. After Myanmar gained independence in 1948, he continued to practice the European painting techniques he had learned during the colonial period. Kyaw Hlaing exhibited at many art shows in the 1960s, and his paintings were collected by many art lovers. The majority of his work was in watercolor, this oeuvre of pieces counting in the many hundreds. His oil work was less prolific, and the number of paintings is not known precisely: nearly a score of these works have emerged in the hands of Yangon art dealers in recent years. Kyaw Hlaing quoted 80 oil paintings as an estimate of the number of oil works he had done in his lifetime. Kyaw Hlaing's watercolor works, which earned him the nickname "Cloudy", were rendered with skies full of clouds executed in many tones of white, often with portions of the clouds left unpainted to create a searing white given by the background watercolor paper. Many of his paintings are exhibited today in the New Treasure Art Gallery.

Later years

After retiring, he was appointed an instructor at the Yangon Fine Arts school, teaching third-year students. His pupils included Min Wae Aung,

Zaw Zaw Aung Zaw Zaw Aung ( my, ဇော်ဇော်အောင်; born 1971) is a Burmese artist. Zaw Zaw Aung was born at Danubyu, Irrawaddy Division, Burma, in 1971. He graduated from Yangon State School of Fine Arts in 1990. He has participated i ...

Hla Tun Hla Tun ( my, လှထွန်း, also spelt Hla Htun) is the incumbent Minister of the President's Office of Myanmar (Burma) and a former Minister for Finance and Revenue of Myanmar. He is a retired Major General in the Myanmar Army Th ...

, Zaw Win Pe and Kyaw Shein. Kyaw Hlaing was a handsome man with a wiry, towering frame. Two of his students, Min Wae Aung and Zaw Zaw Aung, painted portraits of him. One of these works by Zaw Zaw Aung, an ironic oil painting titled ''Portrait of U Kyaw Hlaing: Visit Myanmar Year 1996'' (1995), was done when Kyaw Hlaing had passed the age of 80. It captured only the lower part of his body in a

longyi A longyi (; ) is a sheet of cloth widely worn in Burma (Myanmar). It is approximately long and wide. The cloth is often sewn into a cylindrical shape. It is worn around the waist, running to the feet, and held in place by folding fabric over wi ...

with his withered legs crossed and his upper body hidden by a newspaper he was reading. It is in the collection of the

Singapore Art Museum The Singapore Art Museum (Abbreviation: SAM) is an art museum is located in the Downtown Core district of Singapore. It is the first fully dedicated contemporary visual arts museum in Singapore with one of the world’s most important public co ...

. He was a calm and taciturn person with a taste for tea and cigars, always helpful to his fellow artists. He lived with his wife in a poor quarter of Yangon. He painted until his last days. He died at the age of 82 on 13 April 1996.

Museum collections

National Museum of Myanmar The National Museum of Myanmar (Yangon), ( my, အမျိုးသား ပြတိုက်), located in Dagon, Yangon, is the major one of the two national museums for Burmese art, history and culture in Myanmar. Founded in 1952, the five- ...

Early life

Work

Later years

Museum collections

See also

Notes

Further reading