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Raffles 1887

RAFFLES COLLECTION

The Hendra legacy

Hendra Gunawan stands as one of the most prominent figures in the history of modern Indonesian art, whose teaching, vision and intellectual leadership extended far beyond his celebrated body of work. In 2007, his works were incorporated into Ciputra World, a development that includes Raffles Hotel Jakarta. In this art-inspired destination, the colours, forms, intricate details and emotional resonance found in Hendra’s paintings are translated into the design language of the property. CLAIRE WRATHALL takes up the story

HEAD into the lobby of Raffles Jakarta, and your eye cannot fail to be caught by a huge painting by Hendra Gunawan (1918-1983), arguably the most important Indonesian artist of the 20th century.

Soaring almost the entire height of the space, it depicts three stylised women, one nursing a baby, hence its title Ibu Menyusui (Breastfeeding Mother). It’s an image that is both quintessentially Indonesian in its references to the aesthetics of Javanese theatre, yet also somehow reminiscent of European Expressionism in its vibrant colours and forms.

Increasingly sought-after – the auction record for one of his paintings stands at almost US$5 million – Hendra’s paintings and sculptures can be found in collections across South-East Asia from the Neka Art Museum in Bali to the National Gallery of Singapore. In Europe his work was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2024 and exhibited at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam two years earlier.

But the largest collection was assembled by the architect-turned-real estate developer Dr (HC) Ir. Ciputra. And the best place to see them is the museum he founded as part of the Ciputra World Jakarta Mall, the development that also incorporates Raffles Jakarta, which is itself full of Hendra’s paintings. As Dr Ciputra put it when he conceived the property, “I did not want just another hotel, a hotel that could be found anywhere. I wanted one that was filled with Hendra Gunawan’s art.”

AN INSTANT EPIPHANY

Dr Ciputra first encountered a painting by Hendra in 1962 at the home of his aunt. “It was love at first sight,” his daughter Rina Ciputra Sastrawinata told Tatler Asia shortly before his death in 2019. “As an architect, he had a keen eye for spatial design,” she recalled, noting his admiration for Hendra’s composition and bold palette.

But he saw something spiritual in them too. As he experienced them, “Hendra’s paintings are filled with Ch’i, a strong inner aura. His soul, thoughts and feelings are profoundly present in each work. This Ch’i causes his works to [seem to] vibrate, and this vibration gives his paintings their distinctive character, expressed through their blazing colours.”

Captivated, he began to collect them. The two men became friends. And having acquired more than 50 paintings and drawings, Dr Ciputra promised he would build a museum in his honour. “I wanted to eternalise Hendra’s name,” he said, by “preserving the collection in a modern museum that would not only display his works conventionally but also present them through advanced visual technology.” It opened on the centenary of the artist’s birth.

"I did not want just another hotel, a hotel that could be found anywhere. I wanted one that was filled with Hendra Gunawan’s art"

– Dr (HC) Ir. Ciputra

PARALLEL LIVES IN TUMULTUOUS TIMES

Dr Ciputra was born Tjie Tjin Hoan in Sulawesi to Chinese-Indonesian merchants. In 1943, the year Dr Ciputra turned 12, his father was arrested by the island’s Japanese occupiers and accused of spying for the Dutch. He never saw him again. Two years later Indonesia declared independence from the Dutch, a revolution that lasted till the end of 1949, when it achieved sovereignty. But he survived this time of bloody upheaval, got himself to college and, at 25, adopted the single name Ciputra. The Ci is a reference to his Chinese heritage. Putra means son in Indonesia.

A dozen years Dr Ciputra’s senior, Hendra was born into poverty in Bandung, the capital of West Java, in 1918. But an aptitude for drawing enabled him to find work from an early age as a scenery painter in a local Javanese theatre. There he was taken up by the city’s artistic community, who nurtured his skills and encouraged him to paint, which perhaps explains Hendra’s commitment to teaching.

Hendra’s subjects were the ordinary people he encountered as they went about their work, often in stylised landscapes filled with vegetation and animals. He doesn’t shy away from depicting hardship, but his figures are never downtrodden. Rather he suggests something quietly heroic and inspiring. As the art historian Astri Wright writes in her book Painting the People, Modern Indonesian Art, “Hendra was fascinated by high-pitched emotion [and] his best paintings are thick with feeling."

Hendra was 21 when, in May 1940, martial law was declared in the Dutch East Indies (as Modern Indonesia then was). Two years later the Japanese invaded and occupied almost the entire colony. An independence movement began to foment, but just as Indonesian independence was declared in 1945, the Dutch regained control, prompting a revolutionary war that lasted till 1949. He fought against colonial rule as a guerrilla. And revolution and the brutal dictatorship that followed it soon became his subjects. It was not until after Independence that he had his first exhibition in Yogyakarta, a show supported by President Sukarno, which gained him acceptance as one of the nascent nation’s most important painters.

Not that he was one to toe the line. Indeed, some of his greatest works were painted while he was in prison, where he was detained without trial from his first arrest in 1965 (for his alleged affiliation to a left-wing organisation that championed “art for the people” and had ties to the Indonesian Communist Party) until 1978. Thereafter he lived quietly in rural Bali.

THREE PAINTINGS TO SEEK OUT IN THE MUSEUM

As Rina Ciputra Sastrawinata put it, “Hendra was an artist imbued with nationalist spirit”, who “treasured [his] motherland” and painted “ordinary, hardworking Indonesians, farmers, market stallholders, mothers looking after children […] toiling in the fields together, dancing or at play”, with great humanity and zest for life.

Of the paintings in her father’s collection, she recalls three he particularly loved. First Pangeran Diponegoro Terluk (Wounded Prince Diponegoro, 1982) – “because it depicts the spirit and strength of a warrior who is prepared to sacrifice himself in defence of his beloved land” – a monumental battle scene that Hendra was still working on it at the time of his death.

Next, Arjuna Menyusi (Arjuna Breastfeeding,1979), a fabulous depiction of extravagantly costumed classical Javanese actors and dancers as they prepare for a performance. Hendra himself was an accomplished performer and puppeteer, and the pre-performance tension and excitement are palpable here. Yet in the upper left quarter, a mother, already made up for the stage, suckles her baby quietly. Mothers, especially nursing children, are a recurring theme in his work. Life goes on despite all the madness, it seems to be saying.

Finally, there is Pengorbanan Ibu (A Mother’s Sacrifice, 1973), a vast green canvas of palms, through which a group of women bound for the market struggle through torrential rain with their cargo of chickens and their children. Like so many of Hendra’s paintings, it evokes suffering – Hendra was in prison when he painted it – but it also suggests there is beauty and goodness, even nobility, in everyday life, however mundane.

Claire Wrathall is a former editor of Art Quarterly and writes regularly on art, culture and travel for numerous publications, among them The Financial Times ‘How To Spend It’. 

"Hendra was an artist imbued with nationalist spirit who treasured [his] motherland and painted ordinary, hardworking Indonesians, farmers, market stallholders, mothers looking after children… toiling in the fields together, dancing or at play, with great humanity and zest for life "