Times Square, New York

As early as in the 1950s, Affandi had given up using a brush and applied paint directly onto the canvas out of the tube. With this free and spontaneous style the artist explored his won emotions and those of his subjects. Times Square, dated in 1958, clearly shows that his signature style has already reached its maturity in the 1950s. The strength of Affandi's fluid style lies in is ability to maintain a coherent structure of his subjects amidst the disarray of lines and colours. Details were meticulously kept, attesting much to the keen observation and to some extent the sense of humour of the artist as he portrays a joyful composition with strolling pedestrians, straying dogs and cats, people who are engaging in conversation and people who are just wandering on the street, passing vehicles and staid buildings, in short, a snap shot of the bustling life of a metropolis, real, unrefined but vivaciously honest.

Working with his fervent brush strokes, Affandi has a natural talent to inundate his subjects with such emotions that every work screams out the personality of the artist. The present work underscores why Affandi is best understood as an unabashed expressionist. Every person he portrays and every object he depicts are but a semblance of their objective and realistic forms, in fact they are depicted simplistically, with a smear of paint here, and a stroke of brush there, but the ingenious touch of the artist has endowed the clutter of everyday existence with such vigor and conviction that the scene is abound with spontaneous and theatrical elements.