LOT 38
RUDOLF BONNET
B. Netherlands, 1895 – 1978
A Young Indonesian Girl, 1956
Signed “R. Bonnet” on upper right Inscribed “Ni Ringki Bali 1956” on upper left
Pastel on paper
83 x 48 cm
Private Collection, Singapore
RM 30,000 – RM 70,000
Rudolf Bonnet was first introduced to the tropical island of Bali through its renditions in artworks by the Dutch artist W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp and the German artist Walter Spies. Chasing the myth of the untouched, unspoiled land and its alluring inhabitants, Bonnet arrived in Bali in 1929 and settled in Ubud — the epicentre of art and culture. His aim was to immerse himself in the island’s culture and landscape. For Bonnet, Bali was a grand stage and its people the enigmatic performers that he would capture again and again in expressive chalk drawings on paper.
Rudolf Bonnet was one of the great movers and shakers who fuelled the Balinese legend as an artist’s paradise and established the Pita Maha movement (with Walter Spies and Gusti Nyoman Lempad), and the Museum Puri Lukisan, for which he received the Dharma Kusuma Art Award, Indonesia’s highest cultural award posthumously. The artist was educated at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam and resided in Bali until 1940. After time in internment camps in Pare-Pare, Bolong and Makassar, he returned to Bali and to set up his base in Campuan, where Antonio Blanco was.