Page 71 - Sidharta Auctioneer

Works by Deceased Artists in our Auction

Our Artfordable Auctions have usually been associated with young or
younger artists such as Bonnie Setiawan, Rudi Mardianto and many other
names. However several artists we feature in our Artfordable Auction are
artists who are deceased. Late last year, Jeihan Sukmantoro, an Indo-
nesian Modern Art maestro who has been a star of our auctions, passed
away at the age of 81 years adding to our “pantheon of deceased artists.
It is said that the price of the works of artists increase sharply once they
are deceased. Of course this just follows the basic economic principle of
supply and demand. Once an artist dies, no more works are added to his
or her pool of supply. Even if demand remains constant, the price of the
pieces increase. So, the most important thing is to have demand in the first
place. What creates demand? Demand happens way before the artists are
deceased.
Demand for the works of artists is developed since the artist’s
characteristic style is formed. Although they might be influenced by great
artists under whom they may have studied, every artist is interested in
eventually establishing their own artistic style. Once they have managed to
establish their own style, they should be able to be marketed to art
collectors, who will become interested in their unique artistic styles.

In our “pantheon” of deceased artists, are artists trained in Yogyakarta,
such as Maria Tjui, Nyoman Gunarsa and Krijono. While they might not
have received direct instruction from Affandi, their works show tremendous
influence of the Indonesian modern art pioneer, especially in their
expressionistic brushstrokes. More intriguing is how they have managed to
each develop their own artistic approaches and style, while not having to
give up traces of Affandi’s influence in their styles.

While Affandi painted by pressing paints out of their tubes to delineate his
forms on to the canvas, Maria Tjui applied wet paints and also paints from
tubes using a brush to create her expressionistic forms. The brushstrokes
appear almost as dynamically linear as Affandi’s, but her linear use of wet
paints mark her unique signature style. Affandi’s influence on Nyoman
Gunarsa’s paintings are apparent in his narrative genre painting done in
the 1960s and 1970s. However, the stronglines of his more recent various
singular dancers, also show Affandi’s influence. While Affandi tries to limit
his work to strictly just lines of tube paints on almost bare white canvases,
Nyoman Gunarsa fills his backgrounds with color and ornaments. Krijono
takes Gunarsa’s aesthetic one step further towards the abstract. Using
large blocks of bright unmixed primary colors and strong outlines, Krijono
creates his unique strong graphic compositions. He refused to mix colors to
get a new color. “I’m a painter, not paint mixer.” he is known to have said.
His colors are usually primary colors.

The late Popo Iskandar and Jeihan Sukmantoro both studied at the
Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB). Most early students of the Institute
painted using the Analytical Cubism method popularized by Dutch painter
Ries Mulder, who taught there. While there are still some slight traces of
Analytical Cubism in both in Popo’s and Jeihan’s works, they also managed
to develop their own characteristic style. Popo often combines large blocks
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