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Lot Essay
Sudjojono, widely considered the first of the Modern Indonesian painters, is credited with taking a leading role in the Indonesian nationalist movement, portraying social realism in his paintings. From the start of the 20th century to the 1950s, the art scene in colonial Dutch East Indies and later the young Indonesian Republic was proliferated with imageries of beautiful landscapes and women clad in elaborate and refined clothes, which to Indonesian modernists like Sudjojono and his contemporaries, was a gross distortion of the reality of the country. As a visceral reaction to these aesthetic principles, Sudjojono strived to represent Truth in his works, reflecting unbiased societal realities.
As such, Sudjojono's representation of Indonesia's inherent beauty in Danau Toba, Prapat (Lake Toba) (Lot 160) is not wholly fantastical - he portrays real people and evidence of human existence in this work. Like other similar landscape paintings of the time, the focus of the painting is solely on the magnificent mountains overlooking the titular lake, dwarfing any human existence by their looming presence, reaffirming to the audience the might of Nature in its elements. Fringe pictorial elements of the composition show evidence of human existence, tempering the transcendental atmosphere created by the mountains' great crests.
Danau Toba, Prapat (Lake Toba) is an exceptional example of S. Sudjojono's love for nature. Painted in 1975, this work exemplifies the evolution of Sudjojono's artistic style towards the realism movement, and indeed, shows his progression towards mellower and calmer subjects for his paintings.
Towards the latter half of his painting career after he had renounced social realism, Sudjojono embarked on an extensive body of works that dealt with myths, legends, Biblical subjects and allergory. Hutan Terbakar (Lot 161) shows a scene of animals fleeing a jungle, immediately putting it within the allegorical tradition of such paintings executed by the Orientalists artists and the first modern painter from Java, Raden Syarif Bustaman Saleh. The dense and heavily worked over composition is typical of the 1970s works of Sudjojono and demonstrates his interest in social observation and commentary through the veiled language of allegorical paintings.
As such, Sudjojono's representation of Indonesia's inherent beauty in Danau Toba, Prapat (Lake Toba) (Lot 160) is not wholly fantastical - he portrays real people and evidence of human existence in this work. Like other similar landscape paintings of the time, the focus of the painting is solely on the magnificent mountains overlooking the titular lake, dwarfing any human existence by their looming presence, reaffirming to the audience the might of Nature in its elements. Fringe pictorial elements of the composition show evidence of human existence, tempering the transcendental atmosphere created by the mountains' great crests.
Danau Toba, Prapat (Lake Toba) is an exceptional example of S. Sudjojono's love for nature. Painted in 1975, this work exemplifies the evolution of Sudjojono's artistic style towards the realism movement, and indeed, shows his progression towards mellower and calmer subjects for his paintings.
Towards the latter half of his painting career after he had renounced social realism, Sudjojono embarked on an extensive body of works that dealt with myths, legends, Biblical subjects and allergory. Hutan Terbakar (Lot 161) shows a scene of animals fleeing a jungle, immediately putting it within the allegorical tradition of such paintings executed by the Orientalists artists and the first modern painter from Java, Raden Syarif Bustaman Saleh. The dense and heavily worked over composition is typical of the 1970s works of Sudjojono and demonstrates his interest in social observation and commentary through the veiled language of allegorical paintings.