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).