Basuki Abdullah

Biography

Basuki Abdullah said that he painted the face of Prince Diponegoro in the picture “Prince Diponegoro Leads the War” on the prompting of Nyai Roro Kidul, the spirit mistress of the Southern Sea. He was then preparing a solo exhibition at the Hotel Victoria in Amsterdam. There is no way to check such a story, but it shows how the artist himself talked about his work.

He was born on 25 January 1915 in Surakarta (Solo), in central Java, and at birth was named Muhammad Basuki Abdullah. His father, Abdullah Suriosubroto, was a painter and dancer and became his son’s first teacher. His paternal grandfather, Dr Wahidin Sudirohusodo, was among the figures of the Indonesian national awakening of the early twentieth century. Basuki himself, so the tradition goes, was drawing famous people from the age of four: Gandhi, Tagore, Krishnamurti. Later he became a Catholic and took the name Fransiskus Xaverius.

He finished school in Solo, at the Catholic HIS and MULO (the Dutch-language primary and secondary schools for local children). A Jesuit priest, Father Koch, helped him obtain a scholarship, and in 1933 Basuki left for The Hague, to the Academy of Fine Arts. The course took three years. After The Hague he travelled to Paris and Rome to study and look at paintings.

During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies he joined the organisation Poetra (Centre of People’s Power), founded on 19 March 1943, and taught painting there. His pupils are said to include the critic and artist Kusnadi and the Impressionist Zaini. He also worked at Keimin Bunka Shidosho, the cultural centre of the Japanese administration, together with Affandi, Sudjojono, Otto Djaya and Basuki Resobowo.

He spent the years of the revolution outside Indonesia; the reasons for his departure are unclear. On 6 September 1948, in Amsterdam, at the time of Queen Juliana’s coronation, a painting competition was announced. Basuki Abdullah defeated 87 European rivals. It was after this that he became known outside Indonesia. In the Netherlands he travelled widely in Europe, especially in Italy and France.

He is known above all for portraits: beautiful women, including nudes, and statesmen. He painted these romantic images in a firm realist manner. Besides portraits there are landscapes, animals, flowers, and scenes of the struggle for independence and of national construction. Among the titles on record are “Gatotkaca with Pergiwa and Pergiwati”, “Maria Assumpta” and “Harvest”.

He held solo exhibitions in Indonesia and abroad: in Bangkok, Malaysia, Japan, the Netherlands, England and Portugal. His works are held in about twenty-two countries. He spent a considerable part of his life abroad. For several years he worked as court painter to King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand. President Sukarno appointed him painter of the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta, and from 1974 he settled in Jakarta. His works decorated the palaces of Indonesia, and his official portrait of President Suharto became one of his best-known commissions. How many times he painted statesmen, I have not managed to establish.

Basuki Abdullah was killed by robbers who broke into his house in the Cilandak district, in the south of Jakarta. He was found dead on 5 November 1993.