Saturday, April 18, 2009

affandi maestro from yogyakarta

Affandi is one of Indonesia’s most well known painters. He was one of the founding members of PERSAGI, an association of Indonesian artists. He also founded two arts organization in the late 1940’s: “Community Artists” and “People’s Artists.” In the 1950’s he traveled across India on a grant from the Indian government. He held a number of one-man exhibitions there, and in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands, where he continued his travels. Although he was self-taught, upon his return to Indonesia in 1955 he began to teach painting at the Indonesian Academy of Fine Arts in Yogyakarta.
Affandi later traveled to Honolulu to participate in the first East-West Centre Artist-in-Residence program. He has received awards for his work, including an Indonesian Art Award from the Ministry of Education and Culture in 1969 and an Indonesian Government Gold Medal in 1978.







Affandi (1907-1990; Cirebon, West Java) was a self-taught artist. From 1951-1956 he travelled and held exhibition throughout India, the United Kingdom, Holland Belgium, France, and Italy, later he taught painting sculpture at the Akademi Seni Rupa Indonesia (ASRI, Indonesian Academy of Fine Arts) in Yogyakarta, Central Java.

In 1973 The Museum Affandi was established on the grounds of his residence in Yogyakarta. Affandi's highly expressionistic and dynamic works have very thick applications of paint squeezed directly from the tube with color fields smeared by hand.


Awards Affandi received : Piagam Anugerah Seni (Indonesia, 1969), honorary doctorate (University of Singapore, 1974), Dag Hammarskjoeld, International Peace Prize (Florence, Italy, 1997), Bintang Jasa Utama (Indonesia, 1978). Collection: East-West Center (Honolulu, Hawaii). Exhibitions: Museum of Modern Art (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1966), East-West Center (Honolulu, 1988), Festival of Indonesia (U.S.A., 1990-1992), Gate Foundation (Amsterdam, Holland , 1993), Singapore Art Museum (1994), Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Jakarta, 1996) Indonesia-Japan Friendship festival (Morioka, Tokyo, 1997), ASEAN Masterworks (Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 1997-1998).

Friday, April 17, 2009

the art of Arie Smith

ADRIANUS WILHELMUS SMIT, better known as Arie Smith was born in Zaandam, Holland in 1916. Moved and resided in Bali from 1956. Fall in love with Balinese culture ever since.


He formed artists community in Pengosekan village near Ubud known as 'Young Artist'.
His paintings have simple or naive forms. This style probably influenced the Young Artist members. The "Young artist" style now popular in Balinese painting was introduced by the Dutch painter Arie Smith. As other foreign painters also inspired Balinese artists to adopt western techniques but traditional Balinese paintings are still made. But Arie Smith influenced was dominant.
Their paintings are often naive but strong in colors. They used unusual color for the objects, such as red for the sea, blue for the skin, yellow for the sky, etc.

His works displayed at ARMA museum of art, Neka Museum in Ubud, Bali and Penang Museum, Malaysia.


tropical beach flanked by coconut trees

Balinese pura / temple

village girls playing by the river

short bio.
Arie smith studied graphic design at the Academy of Arts in Rotterdam. Smith was sent to the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia official name before independence) for military service in 1938. He worked as a lithographer for the Dutch army's Topographical Service in Batavia (Jakarta) and made maps of the archipelago.

In early 1942, Smit was captured by invading Japanese forces at the start of World War II in Asia and the Pacific. Sent to Japanese forced labor camps for more than 3 years as a prisoner of war and built roads, bridges, and railways in Singapore, Thailand, and Burma.


After the war ended in 1945, Smit was released and returned to the new Republic of Indonesia. He became an Indonesian citizen in 1951. He taught graphics and lithography at the Institute Teknology Bandung (Bandung Institute of Technology) in West Java, and pursued his own artistic interests during this time.

Smit first visited Bali in 1956, and after two months he decided to make this island his permanent home.
He has lived in dozens of different villages across the island over the decades. In the early 1960s Smit gave art supplies to teenage youths in Penestanan village near Ubud in Gianyar, south Bali. With minimal instruction but lots of encouragement, they created a naive style of genre painting that became known as the "Young Artists" Style. Except for the imaginative use of color, their works differ in style and content from Smit's own paintings.
In recognition for his role in the development of painting on the island, Smit received the Dharma Kusuma award in 1992 from the government of Bali. The Arie Smit Pavilion was opened at the Neka Art Museum in 1994 to display his works and those of contemporary Balinese artists.

A very creative and productive artist, Smit often experiments with his style to show refreshing new views of familiar scenes. His works evoke the light and colors of late 19th century Impressionism, but he never paints on location. He sketches outdoors and then creates works back in his studio.


Elements of early 20th century Fauvism also appear in his works, but his style are features which he developed while living and working in Bali. Smit is a master of color and composition. Repeated elements, often simplified to their very essence but still recognizable, create visual rhythms.
His vibrant paintings focus on the people and places of Bali with his own special "broken colors" technique to show the beauty and deeper rhythms of life.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

the art of Basuki Abdullah


Basuki Abdullah definitely the best realist painter Indonesia ever have, he was the best in romanticizing object into glamour royalty. Some of the paintings displayed here are the collection of the first president of Indonesia Dr Ir Soekarno or widely known as Bung Karno [above], who has extensive collection of fine arts.




Jaka Tarub and goddess from kahyangan, a wellknown Javanese folklore 





Basuki Abdullah work best in painting glamour, exotic and sensual object




Basuki Abdullah depicting scenes from the mahabharata and Ramayana,  above King Rahwana kidnapping princes Shinta and was ambushed by Garuda