Bandung, 1922 — 1994 · a living catalogue raisonné
The documented record of Sudjana Kerton
Artist-reporter of the Indonesian Revolution, honoured by UNICEF, and — from his 1976 return to Dago Hill — the great chronicler of everyday West-Javanese life. This catalogue documents his works, exhibitions, collections and literature, entry by entry.
“Each specific subject I paint has become part of my inner feelings since first encounter.”
Sudjana Kerton — kertonart.com
The artist
From the Revolution to Dago Hill
- 1922Born 22 November in Bandung, West Java
- 1944–50Artist-reporter for Patriot during the Indonesian Revolution; joins Pelukis Rakyat (1946)
- 1950First Indonesian artist sent to Europe on the Cultural Exchange Program
- 1952–55Art Students League, New York — under Kuniyoshi, Sternberg and Barnet
- 1964UNICEF selects the woodcut Homeward for its worldwide Christmas card
- 1966Mural for the Indonesian Embassy, The Hague
- 1976Returns to Bandung — the Dago Hill studio-gallery and the great late period
- 1994Dies 6 April in Bandung, aged 71
- 1997Nineteen paintings stolen from the Kerton Gallery — still missing
- 2006“The Lone Wolf,” Honolulu Academy of Arts — first US one-man show
Sudjana Kerton (born Bandung, West Java, 22 November 1922; died Bandung, 6 April 1994) was an Indonesian painter whose sixty-year career runs from the front lines of the Indonesian Revolution to the great, humorous canvases of West-Javanese everyday life that made his late reputation.
Self-taught, Kerton began in Bandung in the early 1940s painting portraits and still lifes, exhibiting in the group shows of the Keimin Bunka Sidosho cultural centre — where, for the first time, the young Indonesian painters of his generation came together — and studying briefly with Dutch painters (Jos Pluimentz, Riesmulder, Henk de Vos). During the Revolution (1944–1950) he worked as an artist-reporter for the newspaper Patriot under the editorship of Usmar Ismail, making documentary drawings and sketches of the independence struggle, and in 1946 became a member of Pelukis Rakyat ("the People's Painters"). His concern with the suffering of ordinary people dates from these years, and never left the work.
Read the full biography, chronology & exhibitions →In 1997, nineteen of Sudjana Kerton's paintings were stolen from the Kerton Gallery in Bandung — described by the estate as "the largest art theft in the history of modern art" in Indonesia (kertonart.com/history). They are still missing.
This catalogue maintains a permanent public register of the stolen works, seeded from the estate's own "STOLEN WORKS" listing on kertonart.com. Each register entry is a full catalogue entry flagged STOLEN, so that titles and, once rights permit, images remain visible to the trade, to auction houses, and to researchers — the documentation practice that makes stolen works hard to sell and possible to recover.
From the catalogue
