Sudjana Kerton

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.

In 1950 he became the first Indonesian artist sent to Europe on the Cultural Exchange Program, studying painting and sculpture in Holland and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. From 1952 to 1955 he trained at the Art Students League in New York — painting under Yasuo Kuniyoshi, graphics under Harry Sternberg and Will Barnet — and was made a Lifetime Member of the League in 1970. He studied mural technique in Mexico City (1962–63); in 1964 UNICEF chose his woodcut Homeward for its worldwide Christmas card, the first Indonesian artist so honoured; in 1966 he painted a mural for the Indonesian Embassy in The Hague; and from 1968 to 1973 he ran his own Sudjana Galleries in Mt. Kisco and North Salem, New York, teaching drawing, painting and batik.

In 1976 Kerton came home. On Dago Hill in Bandung, in the foothills of Mt. Tangkuban Prahu, he built the studio-gallery later known as Sanggar Luhur and entered what is widely regarded as the most outstanding and prolific period of his career: satay sellers, becak drivers, market women, wayang performances, village weddings — the lifestyle and culture of Indonesia, especially West Java, painted from memory "to be able to express my inner feelings more clearly."

His works entered the collections of President Soekarno, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Singapore Art Museum, the National Gallery of Indonesia, Museum MACAN and Museum Pasifika, among others. He died in Bandung on 6 April 1994. His legacy has since been marked by the retrospective "Nationalism and its Transformation" (Jakarta, 1996), the sketch-and-graphics survey "The Revolution & Evolution of Sudjana Kerton" (Museum Benteng Vredeburg, Yogyakarta, 1999), a posthumous award for outstanding work in art from Indonesia's Minister of Education and Culture (1999), and his first American one-man show, "The Lone Wolf" (Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2006–07). In 1997 nineteen of his paintings were stolen from the Kerton Gallery in Bandung; they remain missing, and this catalogue maintains a public register of them.

Every statement above is drawn from the estate's biodata (sources/kerton_biodata.pdf) and kertonart.com; see the Literature index.