Natalie Campbell
My art piece is inspired by War and piece (1950’S) by Hendra Gunawan. Gunawan was an Indonesian painter best known for using western techniques and combining them with traditional Indonesian looks. He was born on June 11th 1918 in Bandung and went on to paint the landscapes of his youth using the rich colours and and a delicate array of lush wildlife using a style reminiscent of German Expressionism. As a guerrilla fighter, Gunawan fought against the Dutch colonial rule and fought once again later as an activist against the ruling government for which he was incarcerated from 1965-1978. The artist passed his sentence continuing to paint using the small scraps of rough canvas that he could find. Today, his work can be found around the world in museums like the Neka Art museum, the Singapore Art Museum and the Ciputra Sundagese Heritage Museum. Gunawan died on July 17th 1983 in Bali, Indonesia.
In this particular art piece (War and piece), he uses an array of cool blues and washed turquoises to depict the background scene of an early day with a mountain. To represent this, I have used cooler colours and a prominent cool green line to depict the mountains which symbolise peace in Indonesia. As well as this, I have used a gradient of small blue squares and two large ones to symbolise the bullets that were fired in the protests Gunawan was apart of. This is a call back to his earlier years as well as a response to the men in the original art piece who were revolutionary fighters just like he was in the 1940’s. Also in the background of my piece, I have used greens and browns to signify the dirt and grass on the skin and clothes of the soldiers. This further links to the meaning of peace as the mountain is made of dirt and grass so I also used these colours to symbolise this meaning. These have been overlapped by blue squares to show that the peace was broken and healed with the green line that represents the mountain further intertwining with the ‘bullet wounds’ in an attempt to show the process of slow but steady healing.
Finally, the numbers in the peace represent the year of one of the fights Gunawan fought in. I have chosen the colours orange and blue for the numbers to signify the man and what I believe to be a spirit in the painting as the blue (the spirit) overlaps and protects the orange number. To conclude, I believe my piece is filled with the deep meaning of healing internal and external wounds to resurrect the peace within the country.