Lot Essay

One of the greats of Indonesian Modernism, Hendra Gunawan was persona non grata when he was released from Kebon Waru prison in 1978 after 13 years inside. He had been imprisoned for his membership of Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat (LEKRA), a nationalist social and cultural movement associated with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Dr Lukas Mangindaan gave him shelter and the many paintings that he was gifted resulted in one of the great collections of Hendra's works. Dayung Batu dan Rindu is one of those works.

Translating as 'Stone Paddle and Longing', we see a scene of a woman, a mother-figure, breastfeeding two children, with a third child standing to her side on the back of a man lying prone with his head upon the woman's lap. She in turn grooms his hair. The stone paddle of the title is scratched out against the cranberry red ground. Hendra’s expressive use of colour suggests heightened emotion, an intense magical realism within which the wayang kulit-inspired figures perform. The role of the woman is arch-nurturer, a trope that Hendra continually revisited in his celebration of everyday life. His version of genre scene, however, are always shot-through with a suggestion of other desires.

Is the 'longing' of the title referring to the children’s deep pleasure at their intimacy with the mother-figure, or is it the man who longs for her? Perhaps it is the woman herself who longs for something else. A paddle made of stone does little to provide transport, so perhaps the stone paddle suggest that she is forever stuck providing the multi-tasking role of carer and falling into the prison of self-sacrifice. Hendra's own memories of his mother informed his representations of women as nurturer, and his women often breastfeed or perform grooming rituals. This particular work carries immense historical and emotional weight. The friendship between Gunawan and Mangindaan adds a personal dimension to the painting, making it more than just a work of art—it becomes a relic of personal and national history. Furthermore, as an artwork created in the later stages of Gunawan's life, it encapsulates his mature style, reflecting years of artistic evolution and personal struggle. The current lot is comparable in size, content and composition to Women and Children by the Beach (undated), which sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong on 31 March 2019 for a premium-inclusive HKD10.98 million/ US$1.398 million.

Biography
Born into a poor family in Bandung, West Java, Hendra received no formal training but began to paint scenery for a local theatre troupe. The artistic networks of the period leading up to the Second World War are significant in the story of Indonesian Modernism. Hendra was one of the study group known as the Kelompok Lima (Group of Five) artists in Bandung from 1935, alongside Affandi, Barli, Sudharso and Wadhi. After the war he and his fellow artist Sudjana Kerton joined the Sanggar Pelukis Rakyat (People's Artists' Studio), founded in 1947 in Yogyakarta, Central Java.

Hendra had his first solo exhibition at the Indonesian National Committee Building, Yogyakarta, in 1946, at the point when, in the aftermath of the war, the Netherlands began its military attempt to regain its former colony. It was another decade before he had a second solo show at a pavilion of the Hotel Des Indes, Jakarta. After his imprisonment he moved to Bali, where he died in 1983.

Long revered as a key figure of Indonesian Modernism, Hendra's profile has risen further in recent years. Last year (2024) his work My Family, 1968, was sponsored by the National Gallery of Singapore to be exhibited at the Venice Biennale. His work was also featured at the MACAN Museum, Jakarta, in 2023 and the Revolusi exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, in 2022.