Word: sudjojono
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...artistic journey of Indonesia's great painter, Sindoutomo Sudjojono (1913-1986), was as complex as his favorite subject - Indonesia's independence and development. During his early career, Sudjojono eschewed the prevailing style of painting because its naturalistic, European conventions smacked to him of colonialism. Instead, he took up socialist realism, and put his brush at the service of the country's communist party. By the 1960s, he had switched from propaganda to Pop Art. Toward the end of his life - disenchanted by Suharto's right-wing regime and shunned by leftist artists who felt he had betrayed them - Sudjojono turned...
...riveting retrospective of Sudjojono's work at the Museum of the National University of Singapore Centre for the Arts until Aug. 24, entitled "Strategies Towards the Real: S. Sudjojono and Contemporary Indonesian Art," now tries to shed light on his political context and artistic legacy. But it also goes a step further by hanging 16 of his rarely seen works alongside those of contemporary Indonesian artists - among them current auction-market favorites I. Nyoman Masriadi, Agus Suwage and Rudi Mantofani - in a bid to convey the influence Sudjojono has had on generations after him. "Sudjojono is regarded as the theorist...
...Painted in that year, it shows a young artist, in a red hip-length jacket, holding up a paintbrush like a peace offering amid a violent streetscape. In the background, graffiti from the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) is scrawled across the walls. The painting's content is explicitly political. "[Sudjojono's] point is that all the artist needs is his paint and brush and he can take on the world," explains Kuala Lumpur gallery owner Valentine Willie. Putting the artist center stage also gave the work a self-referential quality that would be echoed in the paintings of Masriadi...
...Indeed, in 2001 the Yogyakarta-based Suwage produced his own take, So Was Born the Generation of the Nineties. In the updated version, Sudjojono's fragile political optimism, stemming from the hope that the Sukarno-led left and Suharto-led right might reconcile, has given way to cynicism. The expression of the artist in Sudjojono's painting is serene; in Suwage's, it is aloof. Gone are the cerulean sky, the chaotic melee of betjak drivers and army lorries, and any other form of life except for the artist, who is stripped of the mobility of Sudjojono's figure...
...Born in Sumatra, Sudjojono went to school in Bandung. According to his daughter Maya, he trained for several years under a Japanese artist, who was likely an officer in the World War II army of occupation. Otherwise he earned a precarious living through school teaching...