Stories

For its 2026 edition, themed “Offerings” (Agora Ballroom, Thamrin 9, Jakarta, 4–7 June 2026), ArtMoments Jakarta again placed Sudjana Kerton in its Masters programme, presenting him among the pioneering figures of modern Indonesian art alongside S. Sudjojono, Mochtar Apin, Gregorius Sidharta, Made Wianta and Jeihan Sukmantoro. Drawn with the estate, the selection spans oils, lithographs, etchings and sketches from the 1950s to the 1980s, framing Kerton for a younger generation of collectors.

Ahead of ArtMoments Jakarta 2026, Prestige Indonesia published a long interview with the artist’s daughter and custodian, Tjandra Kerton. She describes a deliberate painter who composed each canvas in pencil or charcoal before adding oil — a work “had to be intellectually considered” — and was, by design, less prolific than contemporaries such as Affandi or Hendra Gunawan.

She recounts the origins of recurring motifs (the water buffalo with a bird on its back, from childhood rice-field visits) and a three-part Sisingaan series she suggested when he felt creatively blocked. She also explains how Kerton photographed, titled and recorded every work in his lifetime — an inventory his wife Louise Mozelle and Tjandra have maintained since his death in 1994.

“Bandoeng Doeloe: Kenangan Melalui Mata Sudjana Kerton” (Old Bandung: Memories Through the Eyes of Sudjana Kerton), a Sanggar Luhur × ArtMoments collaboration, ran 16 December 2025 – 4 January 2026 at Plataran Bandung. Built around Kerton’s drawings and graphic sketches, it retraced the streets and corners of the city that formed him — a narrative journey through the Bandung he carried in memory.

At its 2025 edition, “Restoration” (Agora Exhibition Hall, Jakarta, 7–10 August 2025), ArtMoments Jakarta marked Indonesia’s 80th year of independence with a Masters tribute to four seminal modern artists — Sudjana Kerton, Ahmad Sadali, S. Sudjojono and Fadjar Sidik — whose work, the fair said, helped shape the nation’s visual and cultural identity.

An exhibition in Surabaya (August 2025) presented the four “UFO” paintings Kerton made after reporting an extraterrestrial encounter near his Dago studio in Bandung around 1978 — among them Dreaming of UFOs, depicting a landing craft and strange footprints in the grass. Mounted with the family, the show drew members of BETA UFO Indonesia. Kerton’s account — small, large-headed beings, a craft, telepathic messages of cosmic unity — is a little-known thread in his biography that the works record directly.

“The Hidden Treasures of Sudjana Kerton” (Art:1 New Museum, Kemayoran, Jakarta, 11–26 June 2025) was the major 2025 survey of the artist’s legacy — organised by his studio-gallery Sanggar Luhur with Art Moments and curated by Dr. Sadiah Boonstra. It gathered sketches, drawings, prints, lithographs, woodcuts and paintings, many shown publicly for the first time, tracing Kerton from his revolutionary reportage — including a 1949 sketch of the transfer of power in Bandung — to the vivid canvases of his later years.

Covering the Art:1 exhibition, Hypeabis focused on its archival dimension — the sketches, prints and documentary traces that show Kerton the visual journalist as much as the painter, and the estate’s careful preservation of his record.

The Art:1 exhibition drew notable public visitors — among them the musician-turned-politician Giring Ganesha — a sign of the renewed national attention around Kerton’s legacy in 2025.

Across 2018–2025, successive Kerton canvases set new auction highs at houses including Larasati and Sotheby’s — among them the 1988 canvas Nyawer (Wedding) — a steady upward trajectory in the secondary market. In keeping with this catalogue’s practice, the record notes the pattern of recognition, never a price.

A feature in Bandung Bergerak read the Bandung landscape and everyday life through Kerton’s draughtsmanship — the “people’s painter” (Pelukis Rakyat) whose line held the basin’s terrain and its ordinary rhythms.

Metro TV’s arts coverage revisited Kerton as a revolutionary-era artist, tracing his path from wartime artist-reporter to chronicler of West-Javanese life and reflecting on why his humane, socially engaged canvases still matter to modern Indonesian art.

Kerton’s studio-gallery on Dago Hill in Bandung — Sanggar Luhur, built after his 1976 return — remains owned and run by the family, principally his eldest daughter Tjandra Kerton. She has spent decades safeguarding the works, documenting their provenance and maintaining the inventory her father began, the steady custodianship behind the recent wave of exhibitions and the estate’s engagement with a new generation of collectors.

Kerton’s canvases remained a fixture of Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Southeast Asian Art sales — with works such as Harvest (2019) and Indonesian Village Life (2020) among the notable appearances — a mark of sustained international attention decades after his death. This catalogue records that such milestones occurred, not the sums involved.

Museum MACAN opened its inaugural exhibition, “Art Turns. World Turns.” (4 November 2017 – 18 March 2018), drawing on the museum’s collection to survey Indonesian and international modern and contemporary art. Sudjana Kerton featured among the Indonesian artists represented — placing his work inside the country’s most prominent new museum from its opening.