Background
Aung Khin was born on 13 February 1921 in National Kyun Aung Myay village, Hsalingyi township, Monywa district, the youngest of seven children.
Aung Khin was born on 13 February 1921 in National Kyun Aung Myay village, Hsalingyi township, Monywa district, the youngest of seven children.
His uncle and brothers ran a mixed art workshop, where he studied from the age of twelve.
He is well known as one of the foremost and earliest of modernistic painters in Burma. When he was sixteen, he moved to Yangon to study for five years as an apprentice under the London-trained Ba Nyan, whose works were primarily in a naturalistic and realistic vein. He became active in the Mandalay Artist"s Association, and eventually became Secretary and President of the association.
In 1981 he was elected vice president of the Traditional Art Association, and in 1994 he was made patron of the Mandalay Artists Association.
In 1996 he started the Yellow Art Gallery in Mandalay, named after Frank Spenlove-Spenlove"s Yellow Door School in London where Ba Nyan had studied. Aung Khin"s work largely reflected the European influence of the colonial-era Burmese artists.
This included impressionism, what has been described as a conceptual expressionism and other forms of abstract painting, including cubism. However, he attempted to develop a uniquely Burmese style in his work, often rendering figures in his expressionist paintings with bold outlines and strong color contrast showing influence of the ancient mural painting of Bagan.
Aung Khin died on 14 May 1996.
Singapore Art Museum.