Stories

For its 2026 edition, “Offerings” (Agora Ballroom, Thamrin 9, Jakarta, 4–7 June 2026), ArtMoments Jakarta again presented Kerton in its Masters programme. The fair’s announcement named him first among the pioneering modern Indonesian figures on show, with S. Sudjojono, Mochtar Apin, Gregorius Sidharta, Made Wianta and Jeihan Sukmantoro. Tjandra Kerton described the family’s selection as oils, lithographs, etchings and sketches from the 1950s to the 1980s (Prestige, April 2026).

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 who was, by design, less prolific than contemporaries such as Affandi or Hendra Gunawan.

She recounts the origin of a recurring motif, the water buffalo with a bird on its back, in childhood visits to the rice fields of South Bandung with his uncle, and a series of three Sisingaan paintings she suggested when he felt blocked. Kerton photographed, titled and recorded every painting; after his death in 1994 she and her mother took on the stewardship of his legacy, and her mother turned his records into a detailed inventory of the collection.

Reviewing Bandoeng Doeloe, Bandung Bergerak read the Bandung landscape and everyday life through Kerton’s line — the pastel Gunung Manglayang, the street sketches of 1948–49 — and the “people’s painter” whose drawings held the basin’s terrain and its ordinary rhythms.

“Bandoeng Doeloe: Kenangan Melalui Mata Sudjana Kerton” (Old Bandung: Memories Through the Eyes of Sudjana Kerton), a collaboration of Sanggar Luhur and ArtMoments, ran from 16 December 2025 to 4 January 2026 at Plataran Bandung. Built around Kerton’s pen-and-ink sketches of Bandung from 1947–49 and a selection of his prints — among them the lithograph Kampung and the woodcuts Panen and Kuda Lumping — it retraced the city that formed him. Opening the show, Tjandra Kerton spoke of the Bandung her father carried in memory (Kompas, 22 December 2025).

Opened on 2 October 2025 by former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and curated by Angga Aditya Atmadilaga, “Panen Raya”, a group exhibition on agrarian life and the land at Art:1 New Museum, Jakarta, included rare paintings by Kerton alongside works by Affandi, S. Sudjojono, Srihadi Soedarsono and Lee Man Fong.

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. Sanggar Luhur’s presentation showed some eighty of Kerton’s sketches and paintings, many publicly for the first time.

Tjandra Kerton told detikPop that the family had not mounted an exhibition of her father’s work for twenty-three years, and felt a responsibility to bring it before the public again with The Hidden Treasures.

“The Hidden Treasures of Sudjana Kerton” (Art:1 New Museum, Central Jakarta, 12–26 June 2025) was the family’s first exhibition of his work in twenty-three years. Organised by Sanggar Luhur with the support of ArtMoments and curated by Dr Sadiah Boonstra, it gathered some seventy sketches, drawings, prints and paintings, many shown publicly for the first time, tracing Kerton from his revolutionary reportage — including the 1949 sketch Soeasana Penjerahan Kekoeasaan di Bandung (the transfer of power in Bandung) — to the vivid canvases of his later years. Deputy Minister of Culture Giring Ganesha opened it on 12 June.

Hypeabis read the Art:1 exhibition as an archive of Kerton the artist-reporter, picking out annotated revolution sketches such as Stasiun Madiun (1948) and Tentara Siliwangi (1949) alongside the paintings of village life — among some seventy works, most never shown publicly before.

Reviewing The Hidden Treasures, which opened in the same building as a Fadjar Sidik exhibition, Kompas recalled the visits Heri Dono made to Kerton as a student — recorded in the 1999 book Revolusi & Evolusi Sudjana Kerton — and the curator’s selection of some seventy works.

Indonesia’s Deputy Minister of Culture, Giring Ganesha, opened The Hidden Treasures of Sudjana Kerton on 12 June 2025 and joined a talk with the curator and Tjandra Kerton, calling Kerton’s revolution-era work an inspiration for young artists.

Covering The Hidden Treasures of Sudjana Kerton, Metro TV traced Kerton from artist-reporter for Patriot in revolutionary Yogyakarta, through twenty-five years in Europe and America, to the paintings of ordinary people he made after his 1976 return — quoting the curator and Tjandra Kerton on why his work had been overlooked.

Museum MACAN’s collection exhibition on the body and space, “Pointing to the Synchronous Windows”, included Sudjana Kerton among its artists, alongside Affandi, S. Sudjojono, Ahmad Sadali, Yayoi Kusama and Lucio Fontana.

Sanggar Luhur, the hilltop studio-gallery Kerton built at Dago Pakar, Bandung, after returning in 1976, is still run by the family — above all by his eldest daughter, Tjandra Kerton. With her mother she has kept the collection and the record her father began, and since 2025 she has brought his work back before the public.

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. In its section on independence, Kerton’s large canvas Akibat Pemboman di Lengkong Besar Bandung, 1945 (1979) hung alongside works by Affandi and Hendra Gunawan — placing his work inside the country’s most prominent new museum from its opening.