Penjual pepaya (Papaya vendor)

"Although his style and colours developed, Hendra's choice of themes did not change dramatically his painting life. From the beginning, it seems, Hendra was painting people in contexts of work and play, in celebration, struggle, and death. Such themes were well established long before he joined LERKA. Seeds of Hendra's mature style were already in place in the 1950s, such as the tendency to depict people in profile or in silhouette, with a certain stylised exaggeration of facial features, expressive body movements, and long thin arms. This vocabulary is related to that of the wayang, which has influenced so much in Indonesia's visual and performing arts, and is one of the features that make Hendra's paintings look 'Indonesian'." (Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit, and Mountain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1994, p. 170-171).

The present work well illustrates the distinct qualities as explained by Astri Wright in the above quotation. The works of Hendra reveal an individual with a zest of life and for nature. With the curvaceous female body corresponding to the papayas in form and in colour, the artist celebrates her role as a fruit vendor with a dramatic effect that eroded the mundane nature of an otherwise ordinary work.