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Lot Essay
Hendra Gunawan was born in Bandung, West Java, in 1918 to a working-class family. Being constantly in touch with simple village life and deeply involved in the theatre scene, scenes of local environs and a theatrical colour palette frequently emerged in his oeuvre. In 1939, he dedicated his life to painting and participated in the Sanggar Pelukis Rakyat (People's Artists Studio) in Yogyakarta, Central Java together with another Indonesian maestro, Sudjana Kerton. Together with other fellow painters in his era, Hendra faced the most tumultuous period in the Indonesian history; marked with wars and political instability. The artist was eventually caught up in an anti-communist purge and incarcerated for thirteen years from 1965 as punishment for his involvement in the communist-sponsored Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat (known as LEKRA, or the People's Cultural Association).
This long imprisonment left him with an intense longing for his family and the outside world, and the expressive paintings from this period are charged with profound emotions rarely seen in earlier works. It was also a period when colour took on a pivotal role in Hendra's work as Astri Wright commented "(his paintings) radiate with colour—clashing, surprising sweet— but somehow almost always brilliantly resolved in the composition as a whole." (Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit, and Mountain - Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1994, p. 177).
During this period, Hendra painted a number of self-portraits, including the present painting Aku (Lot 338), when he had fewer sources of inspirations for his paintings. Painted in 1974, four years before his release in 1978, the work depicts an ageing man, recognisably Hendra with his long flowing black hair and greying beard, sitting before a prison door, accompanied by a terrifying mask of the mythical demon Rangda and a simple tin cup. The sparsely furnished cell is rendered in a gloomy palette of grey, contrasted with bursts of bright colours centred on the artist and his belongings. There is no view out the barred confines and little light comes through. The man's skin is blotchy, painted in bright tones of orange and turquoise, and his legs and feet become patterned areas of colour play—spots and sinuous lines appear on bare skin, rendered in shades of blue, white, orange and purple—as they emerge from his batik shorts. Resting against a corner wall as a hand encircles a prison bar, the man assumes the air of a Chinese sage, pensively gazing towards the distance and beyond his present confinement—a sign of hope perhaps, at a possible future free from the gloom and isolation of solitude. Despite the seemingly sombre overtones of Hendra's self-portrait, the man's visage is not one of overt anguish or suffering, but is instead softened with a hint of a smile, his lidded but sharply painted eyes emitting a sense of determination and calm endurance. It is the look of a man imbued with the wisdom of his circumstance, but who refuses to give up hope for his eventual release and freedom.
An emotionally uplifting work executed amidst a period of great uncertainty and political instability, Aku is a declaration of faith, resilience and perseverance in the face of hardship that resonates with the viewer in its echoes of bravery against all odds.
This long imprisonment left him with an intense longing for his family and the outside world, and the expressive paintings from this period are charged with profound emotions rarely seen in earlier works. It was also a period when colour took on a pivotal role in Hendra's work as Astri Wright commented "(his paintings) radiate with colour—clashing, surprising sweet— but somehow almost always brilliantly resolved in the composition as a whole." (Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit, and Mountain - Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters, Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1994, p. 177).
During this period, Hendra painted a number of self-portraits, including the present painting Aku (Lot 338), when he had fewer sources of inspirations for his paintings. Painted in 1974, four years before his release in 1978, the work depicts an ageing man, recognisably Hendra with his long flowing black hair and greying beard, sitting before a prison door, accompanied by a terrifying mask of the mythical demon Rangda and a simple tin cup. The sparsely furnished cell is rendered in a gloomy palette of grey, contrasted with bursts of bright colours centred on the artist and his belongings. There is no view out the barred confines and little light comes through. The man's skin is blotchy, painted in bright tones of orange and turquoise, and his legs and feet become patterned areas of colour play—spots and sinuous lines appear on bare skin, rendered in shades of blue, white, orange and purple—as they emerge from his batik shorts. Resting against a corner wall as a hand encircles a prison bar, the man assumes the air of a Chinese sage, pensively gazing towards the distance and beyond his present confinement—a sign of hope perhaps, at a possible future free from the gloom and isolation of solitude. Despite the seemingly sombre overtones of Hendra's self-portrait, the man's visage is not one of overt anguish or suffering, but is instead softened with a hint of a smile, his lidded but sharply painted eyes emitting a sense of determination and calm endurance. It is the look of a man imbued with the wisdom of his circumstance, but who refuses to give up hope for his eventual release and freedom.
An emotionally uplifting work executed amidst a period of great uncertainty and political instability, Aku is a declaration of faith, resilience and perseverance in the face of hardship that resonates with the viewer in its echoes of bravery against all odds.