Senaka Senanayake

For this week’s Friday Find we have a 2003 work by Senaka Senanayake, Girl with Anthuriums. The painting has been in a private Asian collection for more than twenty years and was originally included in Senaka’s first exhibition in South Korea, held at the Kyung-in Museum of Fine Art and Gong Gallery in Seoul in 2003.

Senaka was invited to exhibit in Korea by the Buddhist monk, artist and temple-food specialist Jeongsan Kim Yeon-sik. Jeongsan had encountered Senaka’s work during a visit to Sri Lanka and, captivated by the landscape and vibrancy of his paintings, invited the artist to Korea.

The Seoul exhibition ran from 30 April to 6 May 2003 across the Kyung-in Museum of Fine Art and Gong Gallery in the Insadong arts district. More than seventy works were exhibited, with the paintings documented in a substantial accompanying catalogue. During his visit, Senaka also gave a lecture at Hongik University College of Fine Arts entitled My Path.

The exhibition began a wider programme of exhibitions in Korea, with Jeongsan ultimately organising presentations of Senaka’s work in five cities. This included an exhibition at the Ulsan Hyundai Art Gallery in March 2004.

Twenty years later, in 2023, the two artists were reunited in an exhibition at Gallery Mona Lisa Sanchon in Seoul, celebrating twenty-five years of friendship. The exhibition brought Senaka’s paintings from the early 2000s together with Jeongsan’s more experimental works.

Girl with Anthuriums, which had remained in the same private collection since the time of the original Korean exhibitions, was shown again as part of this presentation.