Lot 138: S. SUDJOJONO

S. SUDJOJONO 1914-1986 A NEW DAWN SIGNED LOWER LEFT; SIGNED WITH A MONOGRAM OF THE ARTIST AND DATED DJAK 1956 UPPER LEFT OIL ON CANVAS 120 by 240 cm.; 47 1/4 by 95 1/2 in. this lot is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from museum s. sudjojono

The New Painting does not propagandize beauty or goodness, but propagandizes the truth to each and everyone.

S. SUDJOJONO

Great artists successfully mark the historical milestones of our time. There are, however, those few who go beyond these boundaries to become hallmarks of their era. One of Southeast Asia's leading masters of the past century, Sindudarsono Sudjojono, is widely regarded to have earned this distinction by illuminating the movement that changed the Indonesian people's perception of art. The Indonesia in which Sudjojono lived in was a Dutch colony deeply immersed in a struggle between a submissive existence as a colonized nation and a revolutionary life as a liberated and honorable one; Sudjojono lived in this cusp of a national awakening and all that it entailed. At this time, 20υth century European conventions of artistic beauty prevailed and naturalistic depictions of the beautiful Indies were as idealised and romanticised as aristocratic portraits.

Sudjojono shunned these conventions and boldly proclaimed that "The New Painting does not propagandize beauty or goodness, but propagandizes the truth to each and everyone." Art historians consider Sudjojono's revolutionary ideas to have spearheaded the birth of Modern Indonesian Art. Reality, as he defined it, went further than the conventions of realism or social realism; it illustrated the human condition. Contrary to the classic notion of the beauty and the ideal, the point about Sudjojono's paintings is to be able to feel them. Here is a painter who understood what it was like to live in the weathered skin of the poor and the hardworking.

By the time Sudjojono completed the current work in 1956, he had witnessed Indonesia proclaim its independence, struggle to defend it and then pave the way to build a new independent nation. For Sudjojono personally, the fifties was the phase in which he shifted his style from expressionism to realism. The stylistic change was underlined by his wish to reach to a wider audience, farmers and workers, who may not have the intellectual background to understand art but who would be able to fully experience the painting in a visual language they could understand.

The mid fifties was also period marked by his deepening involvement in politics, less time as an artist and intensified emotional restlessness. Consequently many paintings from this period were unfinished. This present work, A New Dawn, was one of the few exceptions. That fact, in addition to its theme and large format, has made this rare work one of the most important ones in Sudjojono's repertoire and certainly one of the few that could illuminate this period in the artist's life more completely.

A New Dawn depicts the morning rituals of a village in a long, wide-angle perspective. Villagers are busy getting their water supply for the day using various traditional containers such as bamboo jugs, terracotta ewers and tin-boxes. At that time, water distribution infrastructure had not been built and despite its vital necessity, people needed to travel to a water source in order to get it, unlike the modern conveniences that are available as a matter of course in the present.

In the middle of all the action, the hub on which everything spins is fixed on three figures in the centre of the composition. Standing shoulder to shoulder are three people of different genders and generations, gazing at the bright horizon of a new day as the sublime sun lights up the brilliant blue sky and cast a radiant glow on their profiles. Shadowed foliage and landscape around the painting's edges perfectly frame the brightness of this vista – as if the audience is watching the scene emerge from the darkness and into the light.

Created on the same year that Indonesia severed its last administrative ties as a colony from the Netherlands and the same period when Sudjojono commenced his relationship with the love of his life, Rose Pandanwangi, after a period of restrain and separation, A New Dawn is more than just a painting. It is an unfolding living drama that can be experienced and felt as real in the present as it was more than five decades ago. It heralded a new beginning for both the artist and the nation he loved. It symbolized a universal language that anyone, women or men, young or old, peasant or politician, could identify with – that each new dawn immortalises the power of hope, the whisper of joy and the promise of progress.