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Lot Essay
Painted in 1965, a year after Srihadi Soedarsono married his wife Sitti Farida, Acropolis (Lot 557) is a notable piece which reveals the artist's freedom of expression in his masterful interpretation of an overseas landscape. Part of the artist's travelling series, the present lot is an incredible depiction of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.
While Soedarsono is highly regarded for his expressive abstractions of nature, his first forays into art was as a journalist-illustrator during his national service at the time of the revolution. Upon enrolling into the Institute of Technology Bandung, Soedarsono was exposed to the unlimited emotive potential of the abstract movement. It was here that he developed a fascination with cubism and the other forms of abstraction. Soedarsono describes the liberating experience: "I had freedom of expression, not limited to nationalism anymore. And that fascinated me."
With his travels abroad, Soedarsono captured the development of many civilizations through his works. In Acropolis, the artist applies a splat of white pigment with the back of his palette knife, organically constructing the walls and pillars of the ancient Greek historical site. Placing white on white, Soedarsono makes the architectural outline more pronounced with the variation of accumulated paint against the blended background. The artist delineates the details of the Acropolis with the tip of the knife, completing the image with the imperfect circle of the moon in the upper right corner of the painting. With Western-influenced technique, the artist lends a tactile quality to his paintings through his unrefined line work and streaks of impasto, drawing the attention of the viewers to the hidden elements of the painting. Through the act of painting, Soedarsono renders the ancient site of Acropolis in a modernistic light.
Concerned with the emotive expression of his paintings, Soedarsono's choices of colours are a reflection of his fleeting feelings in the moment. To the artist, colour can exist independently of any other realities. His layering of the cool tones of blue and white effectively projects a sense of tranquility and stillness. From the collection of the Papadimitriou family, Acropolis is unmatched in Soedarsono's expression of the quiet myth and magic of the ancient ruins.
While Soedarsono is highly regarded for his expressive abstractions of nature, his first forays into art was as a journalist-illustrator during his national service at the time of the revolution. Upon enrolling into the Institute of Technology Bandung, Soedarsono was exposed to the unlimited emotive potential of the abstract movement. It was here that he developed a fascination with cubism and the other forms of abstraction. Soedarsono describes the liberating experience: "I had freedom of expression, not limited to nationalism anymore. And that fascinated me."
With his travels abroad, Soedarsono captured the development of many civilizations through his works. In Acropolis, the artist applies a splat of white pigment with the back of his palette knife, organically constructing the walls and pillars of the ancient Greek historical site. Placing white on white, Soedarsono makes the architectural outline more pronounced with the variation of accumulated paint against the blended background. The artist delineates the details of the Acropolis with the tip of the knife, completing the image with the imperfect circle of the moon in the upper right corner of the painting. With Western-influenced technique, the artist lends a tactile quality to his paintings through his unrefined line work and streaks of impasto, drawing the attention of the viewers to the hidden elements of the painting. Through the act of painting, Soedarsono renders the ancient site of Acropolis in a modernistic light.
Concerned with the emotive expression of his paintings, Soedarsono's choices of colours are a reflection of his fleeting feelings in the moment. To the artist, colour can exist independently of any other realities. His layering of the cool tones of blue and white effectively projects a sense of tranquility and stillness. From the collection of the Papadimitriou family, Acropolis is unmatched in Soedarsono's expression of the quiet myth and magic of the ancient ruins.