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Lot Essay
This season, Christie's is pleased to offer select works of three important abstract modernist artists in Indonesian art - Ahmad Sadali, Mochtar Apin and Sunaryo. Mochtar Apin and Ahmad Sadali are considered two of the most important modernist artists in Indonesian art. Discourse on Indonesian art has been more often than not led by discussions on the value of realist art and how the realist tradition has served to anchor the development of the visual arts in Indonesia during the heroic nationalist period of the 1950s and 60s. However, counter to the dominant discourse, a group of artists gathered around the fine art department of the Bandung Institute of Technology were making quiet explorations along the lines of high international modernism.
Both Ahmad Sadali and Mochtar Apin came to abstract art as budding young artists in the 1950s after being educated in Bandung. During the 50s decade, both men encountered the international abstract modern art movement in their respective travels and art studies in America and Europe. Their development as artists took place alongside their participation in discussions about modern art and the transference of art theory, practice and history in new formal structures established in Indonesia for the learning of modern art.
Completed in 1972, Ahmad Sadali's Emas Tersisa (Lot 2136) is a highly representative work from the artist's most significant body of works exploring texture. The work reveals a highly textured surface which the artist has developed into an expansive surface for the incision of marks and the addition of other media, forming a meditative abstract landscape that evokes a range of tactile and viewing sensations. Akin to the practice of incorporating non-art material led by Spanish Antonio T?pies from the 1950s onwards, Sadali create patterns with cloth, arranged and affixed onto the surface so that it appears ridged. A new quality and understanding of the pictorial surface is realised through this. Emas Tersisa grew out of an earlier phase of Sadali's development where he was creating abstract painting with emotion-laden brushwork.
Mochtar Apin's significance in the development of modern art in Indonesia is rarely given full accord. In particular, he played a major part in bridging the modernist tendency with the social movement gravitating around realist art in Indonesia all through the 1950s and 60s. Coming within the critical years of Apin's balancing these two divergent perspectives, Amoureux de Paris (Lovers of Paris) (Lot 2174) stands as a rare work in Mochtar Apin's oeurve that straddles abstraction and figuration. The work combines sensitivity to colour and form that relates to the geometric abstraction that Apin was practising contemporaneously to the painting of Amoureux de Paris (Lovers of Paris) and is a precursor to the body of nude paintings he would explore in the 1970s and 80s.
Coming a generation after Ahmad Sadali and Mochtar Apin, Sunaryo has maintained a steadfast commitment to integrating thoughts on morality, ethics and aesthetics in his abstract and semi-abstract paintings. According to the artist, Between Two Spheres (Lot 2137) creates an imaginary dialogue between a fish and butterfly. The imagery of both animals are discernible in the textured surface of the work. Although superficially different, both are limited in their respective realm of existence, one by the element of water, the other by the brevity of life. Sunaryo infuses an acute philosophical edge in this work, composing a response to the realisation of limitations.
Both Ahmad Sadali and Mochtar Apin came to abstract art as budding young artists in the 1950s after being educated in Bandung. During the 50s decade, both men encountered the international abstract modern art movement in their respective travels and art studies in America and Europe. Their development as artists took place alongside their participation in discussions about modern art and the transference of art theory, practice and history in new formal structures established in Indonesia for the learning of modern art.
Completed in 1972, Ahmad Sadali's Emas Tersisa (Lot 2136) is a highly representative work from the artist's most significant body of works exploring texture. The work reveals a highly textured surface which the artist has developed into an expansive surface for the incision of marks and the addition of other media, forming a meditative abstract landscape that evokes a range of tactile and viewing sensations. Akin to the practice of incorporating non-art material led by Spanish Antonio T?pies from the 1950s onwards, Sadali create patterns with cloth, arranged and affixed onto the surface so that it appears ridged. A new quality and understanding of the pictorial surface is realised through this. Emas Tersisa grew out of an earlier phase of Sadali's development where he was creating abstract painting with emotion-laden brushwork.
Mochtar Apin's significance in the development of modern art in Indonesia is rarely given full accord. In particular, he played a major part in bridging the modernist tendency with the social movement gravitating around realist art in Indonesia all through the 1950s and 60s. Coming within the critical years of Apin's balancing these two divergent perspectives, Amoureux de Paris (Lovers of Paris) (Lot 2174) stands as a rare work in Mochtar Apin's oeurve that straddles abstraction and figuration. The work combines sensitivity to colour and form that relates to the geometric abstraction that Apin was practising contemporaneously to the painting of Amoureux de Paris (Lovers of Paris) and is a precursor to the body of nude paintings he would explore in the 1970s and 80s.
Coming a generation after Ahmad Sadali and Mochtar Apin, Sunaryo has maintained a steadfast commitment to integrating thoughts on morality, ethics and aesthetics in his abstract and semi-abstract paintings. According to the artist, Between Two Spheres (Lot 2137) creates an imaginary dialogue between a fish and butterfly. The imagery of both animals are discernible in the textured surface of the work. Although superficially different, both are limited in their respective realm of existence, one by the element of water, the other by the brevity of life. Sunaryo infuses an acute philosophical edge in this work, composing a response to the realisation of limitations.