From the Collection of Çaka Datuk (lots # 097 to 120)

Collections are often accumulated for decades, and sometimes even centuries. Each of the art work that is added to the collection, contribute in shaping the stories and histories or the personality and/or his/her family. Then comes a time to part with the collection. As touching or sad it may be, perhaps comes with this, is the time to tell and share the stories and histories, not only of the art pieces in the collection, but throught the art, also the personal history of the individual and his/her family.

[caption id="attachment_628" align="aligncenter" width="220"] 097
Hasim
Potret Adam Malik
1975[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_629" align="aligncenter" width="217"] 098
Srihadhy
Bunga
1966[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_630" align="aligncenter" width="221"] 099
Trubus Soedarsono
Wanita
1958[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_631" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 100
Isa Hassanda
Ceremony In Bali
1981[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_632" align="aligncenter" width="212"] 101
Çaka Datuk
Penabuh Gendang Puri Saren - Ubud
1978[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_633" align="aligncenter" width="206"] 102
Sukada, Made
Acinthya
1973[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_634" align="aligncenter" width="217"] 104
Çaka Datuk
Spakenburg Haven - Hollan
1979[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_635" align="aligncenter" width="248"] 108
Abas Alibasyah
Topeng
1968[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_636" align="aligncenter" width="236"] 109
Aas Alibasyah
Topeng
1968[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_637" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 116
Çaka Datuk
Wanita Pengamen Sitter Jalanan
1999[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_638" align="aligncenter" width="229"] 119
Bonnet, Johan Rudolf
Studies of Figures
pencil on paper[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_639" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 120
Bonnet, Johan Rudolf
Male Figure
1970[/caption]

Born on December 9th, 1933 in  Bima,  on the island of Sumbawa, in West Nusa Tenggara, Muhammad Zakaria Datuk,  Çaka Datuk was the fifth of eight children of Rustam Datuk Sari Maradjo and, Siti Sarah. His father was an employee of the Dutch East Indies colonial government who was stationed in Nusa Tenggara, while his mother was born on  Rote island off Timor, in East Nuasa Tenggara. He spent his childhood moving from one town to another around Nusa Tenggara, following his father’s assignments. He attended grade school in Mataloko (Flores Island)  and Soe (Timor Island). in 1948, he was sent to live with his eldest brother Abdul Madjid Datuk in Jakarta to enter the Van Lith junior high school on Jl. Gunung Sahari.

Since he was very young, Çaka Datuk had already had great interest in art. His teacher at Van Lith encouraged him to continue to make artworks. He was determined to continue his education at the Art High School  (Sekolah Seni Rupa Indonesia/SESRI) in Yogyakarta, and then to the Indonesian Academy of Fine Arts (Akademi Seni Rupa Indonesia/ASRI). At ASRI, he became acquainted with Wardoyo, Abas Alibasyah, Amri Yahya, Sapto Hoedoyo, Bagong Kussudiardjo, and many other artists who later gained recognition.  Among the most influential of his teachers were Trubus Sudarsono dan Rudolf Bonnet, who at one point became a visiting professor at the academy. According to Hilly de Roever-Bonnet, the Dutch artist’s niece and biographer, Bonnet considered Çaka Datuk as his protégé.

Along with the exodus of the Dutch residents from Indonesia, Bonnet also returned to the Netherlands in 1957. In 1966, Çaka Datuk continued his studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 1966. Although his initial interest was in fine art, at the academy his interest shifted to fashion design. Upon his completion of the program, he worked as a fashion designer, with none less than Queen Juliana being one of his clients.

Since the late 1960s Bonnet was living at the Rosa Spier Huis, an elderly home especially for artists in Laren. On weekends he would visit Çaka in Amsterdam, reminiscing about Indonesia. During his visits, Bonnet would occasionally make drawings of Çaka and his nephew Wim Sulaiman “Upu” Datuk.

In 1978, both Rudolf Bonnet and his colleague Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, the Prince of Ubud  and founder of the Museum Puri Lukisan passed way in 1978. Bonnet was allowed to be ceremonially cremated as part of the the Tjokorda’s great royal cremation in 1979. Çaka and Hilly de Roever-Bonnet took part in the ceremonies.

Not long thereafter, in 1984, Çaka Datuk returned to Indonesia and lived in Jakarta, working as a fashion designer. His combined interest in fine art and fashion design also led him to design textile, and produced among others contemporary Timor Ikat weavings and Minangkabau gold thread Songket.

After suffering from chronic diabetes, Çaka Datuk passed away in Jakarta, on May 4th, 2014.

Over twenty artworks, mostly consisting of the works of this talented artist, along with art works by other prominent artists with whom he was quite closely acquainted, namely Rudolf Bonnet, Trubus, Abas Alibasyah, Isa Hasanda, and Made Sukada, are featured in this auction.

Link to our auction catalog:

http://www.sidhartaauctioneer.com/cat/home.php?cat=279&sort=orderby&sort_direction=0&page=3

From the Manfred Schoeni Collection of Indonesian and Southeast Asian Art

"Long after we are gone, art can live on and let future generations decide if art should survive or become obsolete."

-- Manfred Schoeni, 1999
(from The Art of Manfred Schoeni exhibition catalogue)

 

Ten years have passed since Asian art enthusiasts were shocked by the news of the tragic death of Hong Kong based art dealer, entrepreneur and also artist Manfred Schoeni, during his vacation in Boracay, The Philippines, on May 2004.

In the art world, Manfred Schoeni was best known as one of Hong Kong’s leading dealers for Chinese contemporary art. His Schoeni Art Gallery was opened in 1992 and it became one of the most successful showcases of contemporary Chinese art in Hong Kong.

While Schoeni is most famous for his engagement with Chinese art, during his numerous visits to Bali he had also started acquiring Indonesian art and art about Indonesia, as well as Southeast Asia.

[caption id="attachment_617" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 035
San Miguel, Roger
Mother and Child IV
oil on canvas[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_618" align="aligncenter" width="259"] 036
San Miguel, Roger
Love[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_619" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 037
Husner, Paul
Balinese Landscape
1998 - 1999[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_620" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 038
Husner, Paul
Landscape of Bali, Iseh
2001[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_621" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 039
Husner, Paul
Balinese Landscape - Ubud
1997 - 1998[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_622" align="aligncenter" width="278"] 040
Dullah
Portrait of a Girl with Flowers in
Her Hair[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_609" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 028    Sutawijaya, Putu
Freedom I[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_611" align="aligncenter" width="243"] 029
Sujena, Nengah
Masih Kepopong (Cocoons)
2003[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_612" align="aligncenter" width="216"] 030
Sudiana, Putu
Contradiction
2003[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_613" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 031
Teja Mulya, I Komang Gede
Tarian Rakyat (Folk Dancing)
2003[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_614" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 032
Sang Made Alit Setiawan
Bermain Dadu
2003[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_615" align="aligncenter" width="300"] 033
Darya, I Nyoman
Budi CS (Name of artist’s friend)
2003[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_616" align="aligncenter" width="212"] 034
Surya Darma, I Gede Made
Big Piercing
2003[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_610" align="aligncenter" width="208"] 028
Alpha Tejo Purnomo
Lelakut (Scarecrow)
2003[/caption]

Featured in this auction (lots #027 to #040) are works of art coming from Manfred Schoeni’s collection of Indonesian and Southeast Asian Art. The collection shows that he was interested in paintings by Indonesian artist Dullah, and Philipino artist San Miguel, and Paul Husner, a Dutch artist who is very fond of Bali.

Yet Schoeni had a wide range of interest in art. The art entrepreneur’s keen interest in contemporary art can be seen from the paintings by contemporary Balinese artists.  In the late 1990s and early 2000s he visited Bali regularly, and on one of his visits he stumbled upon an exhibition organized by the Sanggar Dewata group of artists at the Neka Museum, and decided to acquire paintings by contemporary Balinese artists Putu Sutawijaya, Nengah Sujena, Putu Sudiana, Nyoman Darya, Gede Made Surya, Made Alit Setiawan, and Komang Teja Mulya, as well a painting by Alpha Tejo Purnomo, who also resides in Bali.

What a great opportunity it would be to be able to extend Schoeni’s art collecting legacy for future generations! Ars longa, vita brevis.

Freitag Collection

[gallery]

Thomas U. Freitag – A Missionary of Indonesian Art

The passing of Thomas U. Freitag on May 3, 2013 in Denpasar, Bali marked the end of a remarkable life and personage.  Curator, scholar, art critic, archivist, collector, restorer, publisher and master designer of exhibit installations, Thomas was a dynamic and seminal force on the Indonesian and Balinese contemporary art scene for more than 20 years.

Born in Germany on September 10, 1954, Thomas was the eldest son born into a cultivated family from Cologne. Born without a pancreas, his lifelong struggle with diabetes endowed him with resolute courage and the determination to excel in spite of this handicap. An artistic child, he was already an accomplished painter and dancer at the age of 15. He would attend university in Cologne during the 1970s where he studied to become a librarian, a discipline that taught him the importance of setting up archives.

Thomas was also strongly influenced by the powerful youth movements that changed his generation. Enamoured of the art and culture of foreign lands he would set up one of the first world art galleries in Cologne with his partner Sabina. An adventurer by nature he began travelling the world and first visited Bali and Indonesia in the late 1970s. His first passion was Indonesian tribal art and he would travel to remote destinations and accumulated a small but important collection of objects, which he occasionally sold to German collectors and museums.

At the end of the 1980s he went through a major change and decided to move to Bali for the rest of his life.  Adopting the Balinese name of I Wayan Sukra (Sukra = Friday), he converted to Balinese Hinduism and settled in a Balinese community in Denpasar.  Living off a small monthly stipend from the German government, he gave up business all together and dedicated himself selflessly to the support of the arts in Bali. He began by helping organize the Museum Ngurah Gede Pemecutan in Denpasar without any financial reimbursement. It was a habit that would continue for the rest of his life for Thomas never neither asked nor was he paid for his great contributions to Indonesian art over the years. His work at the museum culminated with an exhibition at the Frankfort Ethnological Museum organized together with Achim Sibeth with whom he co-authored the catalogue who became a close friend and future collaborator.

After a brief stint of helping with Sembilan Gallery in Ubud, Thomas was invited by the brothers Ida Bagus Ngurah and Sidharta in 2003 to set up and curate exhibitions in a new gallery on the grounds of the Griya Santrian Hotel in Sanur. Every quarter he would present a new, always surprising, show based on an intriguing theme. Spectacularly mounted with excellent lighting they were well attended and set a new standard in professionalism on the Island of the Gods. His emphasis was always on young Indonesian artists and scholars for whom he was always a friend, mentor, guide and when needed an honest critic who worked hard to make them think globally. Thomas was the first to insist that a catalogue accompany every exhibition. His emphasis on documentation was legendary and ended up with a huge and well organized archive.

Many of the biggest names in Balinese and Indonesian art can be counted as his close friends including I Nyoman Masriadi, Nyoman Gunawan, Putu Sutawijaya, Putu Wirantawan and Mangu Putra and a significant number of the works in this auction were given to him as gifts to thank him for his support and advice. Thomas also helped numerous projects and scholars gathering information and giving access to his archives. He was also a keen supporter of the traditional arts and played a major role in the research for Adrian Vickers’ recent book on Balinese painting.

Survived by his beloved Balinese wife Ni Wayan Sulasih, whom he married in 2000 and their son Teja, the number of friends and artists who attended his memorial ceremony and cremation stand as testimony of his influence. A passionate collector, the paintings here were the heart of his private collection. All of them were in his eyes masterpieces that illustrated one of the most remarkable periods in the history of Indonesian art. Before passing away Thomas personally choose Sidharta Auctioneers to auction his beloved collection for the benefit of his wife and son.  In his eyes works of art are like children. They are close to us and stay with us but eventual travel on to new lives of their own. It is our wish that these travel on to new homes where they can be loved as Thomas loved them.

Bruce W. Carpenter

As short bibliography of his more important works:

Freitag, T.; Reality of Abstract Painting; I Made Supena, Denpasar, Bali, PT Dian Rakyat 1999

Freitag, T.; Moksa; Nyoman Gunarsa, Klungkung, Bali, Nyoman Gunarsa Museum, 2003

Freitag, T. with Vidyasuri Utami, T.; The Paintings of Ni Nyoman Sani, Yogyakarta, Kotakotak, 2006

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Thomas Freitag's Legacy

Thomas Freitag was an eccentric, as everyone who had met him will tell you. One of his great eccentricities was his commitment to advancing Indonesian Contemporary Art, and Indonesian art in general, in a context where there is no public support for such art, and the private sphere is dominated by market pressures. The legacy of his abbreviated life is his contribution to work of artists, and to explaining their work to the world.

I first became aware of Thomas in 1999 when he, working with Achim Sibeth, produced the catalogue of paintings from the Museum Ngurah Gede Pemecutan for the Museum für Volkerkunde, Frankfurt. This was the first catalogue to bring international attention to younger contemporary artists, notably I Made Supena, I Ketut Susena and Made Mahendra Mangku, whose work Thomas also collected for himself. The catalogue linked Balinese artists working in the Ubud style pioneered by the 1930s association Pita Maha; with that of artists who continued the ‘Beautiful Indies’ style of the colonial era, such as Sudiro; and modern and contemporary Indonesian artists, notably Nyoman Tusan, the pioneer of semi-abstract art with mystical Balinese themes; and Made Budhiana, who inspired younger Balinese artists to work in abstract art. Sudiro’s “Temple” from that catalogue became part of Thomas’ collection, and is included in this sale, as are other works by the leading artists trained in Yogyakarta in the 1970s and 1980s, including Nyoman Erawan, and paintings by Supena, Susena and Mahendra Mangku.

I did not meet Thomas in person until some five years later, when he asked me to write a contribution to the catalogue of an exhibition by Jango Pramartha of his cartoons. It was here that I learned of what Thomas’ extraordinary project of curating exciting exhibitions for the Griya Santrian Gallery in Sanur. The Gallery wisely gave Thomas the opportunity to further his work with new and established artists based in Bali, and to expand the understanding of the Indonesian art scene. There were some precedents for showcasing modern and contemporary art in Bali: before the Pamecutan Gallery and the Tanjung Sari Hotel’s experimental Nata Ayu Gallery of the early 1990s. Nata Ayu’s curator. Ambar Arini, then went on to found the important Ganesha Gallery at the Four Seasons Hotel, under the guidance of Bruce Carpenter. It was Ganesha Gallery that held the first retrospective on a solo Balinese artist, with its Ida Bagus Nyoman Rai exhibition, and this important move was one of a number of initiatives that showed Thomas what could be achieved. In the late 1990s the Sika Gallery became Ubud’s first Contemporary Art showcase.

At Griya Santrian Gallery, Thomas wanted to bring a broader art historical understanding to the presentation of Indonesian art. He always emphasised the importance of the collective nature of Balinese art, and one of his first Griya Santrian Gallery exhibitions in 2003 was of the group Galang Kangin. Soon afterwards he put together an exhibition of Sanur painting, demonstrating how modern and contemporary artist were interrelated with the almost-forgotten Sanur School of the 1930s. His catalogue essays and other unpublished analyses, written under his Balinese name of Wayan Sukra, linked Contemporary forms to the deep cultural roots of Indonesian art, and showed how Indonesian artists fitted into the global art scene.

Thomas and I worked together closely on a number of those projects, aimed at connecting Balinese art history to the Contemporary. The high points of our collaboration were the I Nyoman Mandra retrospective of 2009, and his support in my research project on Balinese art, without which my book Balinese Art: Paintings and Drawings of Bali 1800-2010, could not have been written. The Nyoman Mandra exhibition was taken up by Sangkring Gallery in Yogyakarta, whose owner Balinese-born Contemporary artist Putu Sutawijaya, reinforced the link between Mandra’s Classic Kamasan style and the roots of Modern and Contemporary art from Bali.

Such exhibitions were part of Thomas’ engagement with a more rigorous understanding of Indonesian art, which led him into debates with leading art critics, and an insistence on resisting the urge to mass produce low-quality art to satisfy the demands of the growing market. The artists with whom he worked recognised and responded to that disciplined approach, and have paid tribute to his importance.

.For the e-catalog, click here: http://www.sidharta.co/fa2013/