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B
orn in 1918 in Bandung Indonesia, Hendra Gunawan was one of the founders of the Indonesian Fine Art Academy (ASRI) in Yogyakarta and is now acclaimed as one of Indonesia’s greatest painters. Hendra was not just a painter but also a poet, sculptor, teacher and guerilla fighter. For many years, Hendra was deemed a traitor and imprisoned for thirteen years for his political beliefs. Being considered a security risk, his work was held back from public view and very little was written about him during this period.
His work is now fully appreciated for its celebration and depiction of the daily life of ordinary Indonesian men, women and children. His paintings are filled with vibrant and vividly colourful scenes of Indonesia’s landscapes and its people but his passionate battle against poverty, revolutionary war, imprisonment and that of his own people’s fight against colonial injustice is also visible in his series of paintings. Humanity and empathy are actively engaged by his broad historical panoramas with intimate close-ups of Javanese, Balinese and other fellow Indonesians enduring revolution and hunger and depicted in oils, canvas and sketches.
Hendra celebrated ordinary lives in his art. Instead of focusing on hardship, he saw beauty in the resilience and the capacity for endurance in the women he came across in the marketplace. Even when in prison, those images still dominated his psyche as he still produced gentle and passionate works in the face of adversity thus showing his unwavering integrity. Sadly, Hendra passed away in his hometown of Bandung in 1983 aged just 65.
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