A Legendary Artist, an Austere Life

For Kin Maung Yin, one of Myanmar’s foremost modern artists, perfection—in life as in art—lies in complete simplicity

By KYAW PHYO THA / YANGON

In a one-room wooden house in the northern part of Myanmar’s former capital lives Kin Maung Yin, a man who revels in the simplicity of his surroundings and whose only wish and care is to paint.

Recognized as one of the leading figures of modern art in Myanmar, Kin Maung Yin is revered by many of today’s artists as a living legend. But despite his stature, he leads an almost unimaginably austere lifestyle. He doesn’t own a refrigerator or a washing machine, and he sleeps on the floor not far from the spot where he paints. Blank canvases are piled high where a television might otherwise stand. He has no family.

“Less is more,” says the 75-year-old. “I have everything I need here.”

With no easel, the old painter sits on a floor littered with brushes and Winsor & Newton acrylic paint tubes, brushing vibrant colors onto a canvas that leans against a wooden shelf. He spends the day listening to his favorite European classical music, and when the power cuts, he shakes his head, wailing out in a trademark shrill crescendo and then muttering, “This is Myanmar, this is Myanmar.”

When he tires of working, he drags himself across the floor with his arms, unable to stand without assistance. When he reaches his favorite chair, near the door, he pulls himself up onto a worn-out cushion to read for a while or gaze out at his overgrown garden.

“These knees trouble me,” he complains. “I can no longer move as freely as I did before. And I have some memory loss. Doctors blame that on the stroke I suffered in 2000.

“I want to survive for another five years. That’s enough, as I have been through so many years.”

As a young artist, Kin Maung Yin used to say that his paintings would never be very popular in Myanmar. But he turned out to be a poor prophet, because collectors today are hot on his trail. At his latest show, held in Yangon in August, nearly all of the 50 paintings on display were sold. “Maybe they like it, I’m not sure,” he says.

But he’s being modest.

“He is a very rare artist,” says U Aung Soe Min, an art collector who cofounded Pansodan Gallery in Yangon. “He’s famous not only for his style—his personality and lifestyle have also become artistic. You cannot leave him out if you’re talking about Myanmar modern art.”

His paintings, U Aung Soe Min says, feature unexpected colors. “His unique style and lifelong creations have become an inspiration for younger artists. … He is leading a solitary life, devoting himself only to art, paying no attention to popularity or making money.”

Indeed, Kin Maung Yin shuns the whole notion of art as a money-making proposition. He says he would feel “ashamed” to discuss putting a pricetag on his work.

“I’m not a seller,” he says. “Talking about prices is not my business. People come to me and buy my paintings. I don’t count how much they paid.”

Asked how he feels about others reselling his paintings at a profit, he simply says: “I don’t care.”

Kin Maung Yin started painting in the 1960s but trained earlier as an architect, gaining an appreciation for form and color that would later influence his art, according to his friend and fellow artist Sun Myint.

As an architect, he devoured books about art and tried his hand at portraits, abstracts and any other form he learned through reading. “I’m a self-taught painter,” he says. “All I know about art is that simplicity is perfection.”

By 1962, Kin Maung Yin had made a name for himself in diplomatic circles and the art scene of Yangon and Mandalay as one of the new leaders of modern art in Myanmar, alongside Paw Oo Thett and Win Pe. Throughout his long career, his work has demonstrated his complete commitment to artistic freedom.

“He thinks and paints freely,” says Sun Myint, who penned the forward to “This is Kin Maung Yin,” an Englishlanguage biography of the artist.

Anyone familiar with Kin Maung Yin’s style would agree. His abstracts include riots of vivid colors and bold brushstrokes. He says the Italian modernist Amedeo Modigliani inspired him to paint portraits with mask-like faces and elongated forms.

“I even prefer him to Picasso,” Kin Maung Yin says of Modigliani, who was primarily a figurative artist. “So I painted in his style for nearly 10 years.”

He adhered to that style in his famous portrait series “Seated Dancers”, as well as in another series six years ago depicting democracy icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. That series was especially renowned among collectors because it was created when the former military regime was still in power and the opposition leader was being held under house arrest. At the time, merely possessing a photo or painting of her was regarded as a dangerous political statement, often severely punished under the junta’s draconian decrees.

These days, now that a quasicivilian government is in power and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has won a seat in Parliament, the old artist continues to spend his hours simply, painting. He wakes up every morning at 6 o’clock and spends half an hour keeping still, thinking about the good old days and his parents. Sometimes he tries to visualize what he will create later in the day. “The result always turns out different,” he says.

He opens his house to anyone who wants to visit, warmly welcoming strangers and friends alike to a seat on the floor and offering a cup of coffee or tea.

If asked to name the most important thing in life for an artist, he answers matter-of-factly: food.

“It would be nonsense for me to name something ‘big’,” he says. “We all need food to survive, whether you are an artist or not. That’s all.”