Hardi

Biography

In 1978 Hardi made a photo collage: himself in a general’s uniform, with the caption “President of 2001. Suhardi”. He was arrested for it.

He was released fairly quickly, thanks to Vice-President Adam Malik, who loved art.

The artist’s real name was Soehardi. He was born on 26 May 1951 in Blitar. He sold his first three paintings as early as 1970 to a small shop; its owner, Neka, later became one of the largest art dealers in Indonesia. I have found no details about his childhood or family in the sources available to me, so I add nothing here. From 1971 to 1974 Hardi studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Indonesia in Yogyakarta, then, from 1975 to 1977, at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, in the Netherlands. His first solo exhibition was held in Maastricht too, in 1976. After he returned, he was among the members of the New Art Movement (Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru, or Seni Rupa Baru). His first paintings reflected social protest, as the ideas of the group required. The collage of 1978 belongs to precisely this period: the authorities treated the work as a political statement.

Later he turned to expressionism. Hardi painted many portraits, among them likenesses of the painter Raden Saleh and of President Joko Widodo. He also has paintings on mythological subjects. Other works bear the titles “Balinese Dancer”, “Peasant Family”, “Oil Rig”, “Portrait of President Sukarno” and “Homage to Chairil Anwar”. The sources still describe a good part of his work as sharply social in character. He was also fond of making and collecting krisses, traditional Indonesian daggers.

Some of these paintings found their way to Russia: the Moscow publishing house Klyuch-S used them for book covers. “Balinese Dancer” appeared on a book of poems by Taufiq Ismail (2010), “Peasant Family” on an anthology of Malay and Indonesian short stories, “Malay Blood” (2011), and “Portrait of President Sukarno” and “Oil Rig” on a handbook, “Indonesia: A Short Reference and Russian-Indonesian Phrasebook” (2013). “Homage to Chairil Anwar” became the cover of the book “In Search of a Dream”.

In all, Hardi held 16 solo exhibitions, including some outside Indonesia. From 2009 he was an active member of the working committee of the Congress of Culture of Indonesia, and in September 2015 he became one of the founders of the Cultural Forum of Jakarta (Formja). His paintings are held in museums in Jakarta and Bali and in private collections. In 2002 the Indonesian government awarded him the Permata prize. From 17 to 26 June 2011, for the artist’s sixtieth birthday, a retrospective, “Art and Politics”, was held in Jakarta.

Hardi died on 28 December 2023, at the age of 72.