Affandi

We pay the highest possible prices for works by Affandi

AFFANDI (Javanese, 1907-1990).

Affandi was born in Cierbon, West Java in 1907, the son of a surveyor at a local sugar factory. After finishing his secondary education he found himself increasingly interested in painting, and in his mid-twenties he emerged as a self-taught artist. During his early years he taught school, collected tickets at a movie theater and worked as a house painter, saving leftover paint for his canvases.

An artistic breakthrough occurred in his work of the 1950s when he began to squeeze paint directly from the tube. The resulting style, which has an affinity with the works of Van Gogh, is distinctly expressionistic.

In the January 12, 1953 issue of TIME Magazine, Affandi's workiing method is described as below:

Affandi never learned to use a palette, dislikes brushes. Instead, he squeezes paint on to his thumb, then smears it around the canvas. He will often spend a week studying a subject, but the actual painting
seldom takes longer than 90 furious minutes. "After about an hour," he says, "I usually feel my emotions declining. It's better to stop then. The painting is finished."

After participating in international exhibitions in Brazil and Italy, Affandi received a scholarship from the U. S. government to study arts education. He was made an Honorary Professor of Painting by Ohio State University, and later was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Singapore.

Affandi once told one of his collectors that "If the color is good then it's okay." He told the same man to look at paintings with his eyes and heart rather than his brain.

Affandi's unique home, on the bank of the Gajah Wong River in Yogyakarta, is also a museum displaying over 250 of his paintings. Upon his death in 1990, Affandi was buried in the museum complex.

We pay the highest possible prices for works by Affandi

E-mail: geringerart@yahoo.com