“What will you do during Lebaran?”

By: Rani Yunus

Ramadhan ends tomorrow and the upcoming Idul Fitri end-of-fasting month  — in Indonesia known as Lebaran, will last two days. The whole nation begins to prepare for this day. Baking cookies, special dishes like Ketupat, Rendang or Opor Ayam at home, or packing up bags to leave their urban homes to travel across the nation to their hometowns to celebrate with their family. Let’s see what some fellow Indonesians plan on doing during Lebaran.

Raden Saleh & the Beginning of Modern Indonesian Painting

By: Rani Yunus

“Raden Saleh and The Beginning of Modern Indonesia Painting” is the first-ever monographic show of the maestro’s works in his homeland Indonesia. It is also the first effort to make the paintings of this “Father of Javanese Modernity” accessible to a broad audience. The exhibition will open a new window on his life and his importance for Indonesian art. Dr. Werner Kraus, a German art historian, expert on Southeast Asian art and Raden Saleh-biographer, is the curator of the exhibition.

Exhibition of Raden Saleh's work at the Galeri Nasional Indonesia

Raden Saleh is rightly associated with the beginning of a new visual approach to Indonesian art. As the first Indonesian painter to study in Europe (he spent more than 25 years in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Italy) he brought a new understanding of visual arts back to his home country, though his work remained deeply rooted in Javanese culture. The exhibition aims to show that Raden Saleh started a new form that was both entrenched in a European as well as Javanese tradition. Raden Saleh’s overall contribution to the modernization of Javanese culture and thinking has hardly been explored and shall gain new momentum with this first exhibition of his life and work.