- Full Name
- Arie Smit
- Pen Name
- Photograph by
- Link to Photograph
- Website for biography
- Place
- Ubud
- Related Music
- Related Books
- Related Scholars Articles
Biography
In English
Smit was the third of eight children of a trader in cheese and confectionery in Zaandam. His family moved in 1924 to Rotterdam, where Smit eventually studied graphic design at the Academy of Arts. In his youth he was most inspired by the work of three artists named Paul (Signac, Gauguin and Cézanne). In 1938 he joined the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. After three months he was sent to the Dutch East Indies , where he worked as a lithographer for the Dutch army's Topographical Service in Batavia, engraving relief maps of the archipelago. Etching Balinese mountains onto maps ignited his desire to one day go to Bali.
In early 1942 Smit was transferred to the infantry in East Java, but was soon captured by the invading Japanese forces. He spent three and a half years in forced labor camps building roads, bridges, and railways on the Burma Railway in Thailand, and Burma. After the Japanese capitulation in August 1945, Smit convalesced in Bangkok until January 1946. After being stationed in Denpasar, Bali as a staff writer for the infantry, he returned to the Topographical Service in Batavia in September. Until its discontinuation in 1950, he remained employed at this service, eventually becoming head of the drawing department, but in his spare time he criss-crossed Java as a painter and in October 1948 had his first exhibition in Batavia/Jakarta.[5] After Indonesian Independence on December 27, 1949, all Dutch nationals had to choose between Dutch or Indonesian citizenship within two years. Smit briefly considered emigrating to South Africa, but decided to stay; he became an Indonesian citizen late in 1951. In the following years he taught graphics and lithography at the Institut Teknologi Bandung in West Java.
Bali On invitation by the Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet he visited Bali in 1956, together with Dutch artist Auke Sonnega. He soon met art dealer James (Jimmy) Clarence Pandy, who ran a gallery and souvenir shop. Pandy invited Smit to stay in a house on stilts at the beach of Sanur. Smit and Pandy remained friends and formed a partnership. Pandy was well-connected; Sukarno would sometimes bring his state guests to his gallery. With his love for bright colors, Smit was captured by the Balinese landscapes in its 'riotous light', and soon decided to stay to depict its villages, rice terraces, palm trees and temples.
In 1960, while touring the village of Penestanan in the Ubud District where he then lived, he came upon some boys drawing in the sand. Impressed by their talent, Smit invited them to his studio, where they became the first of a growing number of students. With minimal instruction but lots of encouragement and material support, his pupils created a naive style of genre painting that became known as the 'Young Artists' style, which at its peak had 300-400 followers. Though he is considered the father of the movement, its style is quite different than any of Smit's own styles over the years.
From the time of his arrival in Bali, Smit moved some 40 times, "to see what is beyond the next hill". He stayed longest in his favorite areas of Karangasem and Buleleng. He finally settled in 1992 in the village of Sanggingan near Ubud under the patronage of Pande Wayan Suteja Neka, founder of the Neka Art Museum. In recognition for his role in the development of painting on the island, Smit received the Dharma Kusama (Flower of Devotion, a Balinese cultural award) in 1992 from the government of Bali. The Arie Smit Pavilion was opened at the Neka Art Museum in 1994 to display his works and those of contemporary Balinese artists. The Museum Bali in Denpasar and the Penang Museum in Malaysia also have collections of his work. Smit further had exhibits in Jakarta, Singapore, Honolulu and Tokyo. Smit lived near Ubud for the rest of his life, but died on 23 March 2016 in a hospital Denpasar at three weeks before turning 100.In Balinese
In Indonesian
wikipedia
Examples of work
Bali Post English Edition, May 1980 Conversation with Arie Smit The name is synonymous for many with the 'Young Artist' movement of Penestanan, Ubud- a name that inevitably crops up when one studies the modern evolution of Balinese art. Some people feel that the introduction of the 'Young Artist' movement has only led to a crass form of art whose only merit is commercial, others feel that it is too 'un Balinese'. Arie Smit himself doesn't elaborate much on his role in initiating this new school of art, he considers his role as that of a mere 'suggester'. He implies that he never taught the 'Young Artist's any fundamental concepts or techniques, insisting that he works not on "putting in but bringing out". He claims that he is more interested in the mental states and environment that influence art, the people and the culture that characterise it. His romance with the imagery of Bali is on-going: "Bali is a bulwark of images" and though he admits that this source of inspiration is eventually limited, he cannot shake his passion for it. Perhaps this is a direct result of his philosophy of art, a philosophy that has been tested and refined over the many years that he has spent in Indonesia (he became an Indonesian citizen in 1951). His fascination with Balinese imagery is linked with his interest in 'Child Art'. Fittingly his contribution to Bali has been to provide a vehicle for Naive Art in the ‘Young Artist’ movement. To explain the beginnings and motives for this he takes us back to the Fifties when he was in Bandung. At the time he was working for the Publishing house "Masa Baru” as a lithographer. One of his colleagues was the Dutch born Rina Marsman, a remarkable woman who had once tutored Queen Wilhelmina’s children in exile during WWII. Her extensive knowledge in the field of education led involvement in the area in Indonesia, a country she had learned to love. Rina Marsman had the foresight to include a formidable library of books on the subject amongst the possessions she brought to Indonesia. Arie Smit took full advantage of this opportunity to plunge into books on education and “child art”. Prompted by her, he began working part time teaching members of the Yayasan Beribu organization (made up of influential society women of the time) in education techniques. The Yayasan Beribu was chaired by Mrs. Mary Effendy Saleh, whose husband was in charge of Indonesia's railroads at the time. Rina Marsman was bringing the latest education techniques to this group who in turn were to teach children. In the spare time that he had Arie Smit managed to paint. Out of this set of circumstances grew the first real momentum towards the 'Young Artists'. At one point he was teaching lithography to Bandung's ITB (Technical Institute) students - and through this decided to mount an exhibition there. Via his contact with Mrs. Saleh he managed to distribute art materials to the children of railway workers. "These children drew what they saw around them, and the realities that they lived with. Children can only draw what they have experienced, their own mental environment - and it's spontaneous, non-intellectual...". It fascinated him to see the readiness with which children drew their world, the power of their observation - "there were locomotives, carriages, derailments (it was during the Darul Islam terrorist times), and we noticed that although fundamentally the same there were slight differences between the girls and the boys: the girls would sometimes put in a nurse!" The exhibition was a success. Again when staying near Puncak on the Jakarta-Bandung route he would notice how the village children had 'spontaneously' acquired a catalogue-like knowledge of motor vehicle makes and specifications. He set about experimenting, providing these children with art materials. Once more there was a spontaneous outpouring of the details of their environment, the same overwhelming power of observation. He undertook these experiments wherever he went in Indonesia. When he first arrived in Ball in 1956 he followed the same pattern. It proved to be a surprise: "It just all came pouring out. As there were no cars, ships, etc. then, they naturally drew what was in their environment. But the quality of their imagination was fantastic, the scope of the Balinese children was tremendous: dances, witches, cremations...” He noticed an emphasis on religion and ceremony, a factor he attributed to the wealth of the culture. But for him the most surprising aspect of these drawings was not the subject matter: “They did not depict objects from their immediate environment, or what was static in their surroundings, they almost always drew or painted what was about to happen. They were always anticipating events to come, such as the cremation next week or the dance the following night..” In all his experiments this 'anticipation' was unique to Bali: the tendency of children's imagination to project into the future. It was precisely this type of exotic material that was to prove of interest to foreigners in Indonesia. In 1960 Arie Smit chose Penestanan as the site for his major ‘experiment’, the ‘Young Artist’ movement. It was a poor village virtually owned by neighbouring landowners who used their labor. Arie Smit began by bartering their first paintings for art materials from foreigners working in Jakarta. “During Sukarno's time art supplies were almost impossible to obtain - this source of supplies was vital to the movement". It grew and grew, and other intermediaries began to play a more active role in the marketing (Jimmy Pandy was one who in Arie's memory was most helpful). On the other hand others had to be convinced and won over - yet when these dealers finally started marketing Young Artists they were surprised to see it become one of the fastest selling items An exhibition in Jakarta several weeks after Gunung Agung erupted was a roaring success, partly because Bali was the focus of public sympathy at the time. For Arie Smit it was a relief to get away from the marketing once things were rolling along by themselves - he never relished the role of salesman. "But it was mainly the diligence and industriousness of these painters that kept me going, I felt that I couldn't let them down.” Despite the fact that the movement has now proliferated tremendously ("Nowadays even an expert would have a hard time wading through all these paintings”) he feels that the best of the Young Artist remain the same 40 that he started off - though they are hardly young anymore. Getting back to 'child art’ Arie states again that all naive painting is a spontaneous, symbolic rendering of the ‘environment’ of the painter. He points out that the Balinese have a tremendous power or vision, and feels that they have no need to work from models or to do life sketches. Arie feels that human beings were never the all-important center of the Balinese Cosmos, and says that the renaissance emphasis on man as the center of the Universe is completely foreign to the Balinese. Thus, at least for Arie Smit, the Young Artist is closer to real Balinese art than the art of those influenced by Bonnet: According to him the 'real Balinese' art is embodied in the paintings that came out of Batuan during the Thirties - the depiction of the various different worlds, the symbolic style. Young Artists, by painting from their own imagination in an essentially symbolic style are closer to this Balinese concept of art than any other ‘modern movement’. One of the important traits of ‘child art’ is the exemption of the intellectualization process - Arie worked mainly with young people under the age of 17, the age around which he says "comes an intellectual crisis. The intellect interferes with the direct expression of the imagination, sometimes to the point where hesitation blocks the expression completely." How did the children of the 60's, the young Artists of Penestanan, cope with growing up? He admits that they ran into a couple of crisis points, where ‘intellectual’ concepts began to interfere with their free expression. Despite his principle of non-interference he finally was compelled to step in: "I watched if for some time, letting it go. But at a certain point I had to re-suggest, to re-affirm their confidence in their own power of vision”. He is obsessed with the ‘power of Balinese vision' - the ability to absorb details, the power of the imagination to recall. When one questions the apparent stagnation of Balinese art, especially that of the Young Artists he admits that there is a need for new directions, not only now but continually. "But total freedom of expression is not an Asian trait. Asians, including Balinese, are more concerned with achieving perfection through repetition." He thinks that this maybe the reason that so many Western Art. movements run dry so quickly, because of the tremendous pressure to create something new all the time, every time! To the oriental there is no such stigma attached to repetition. His work with the Balinese has been one of careful balance between new inspiration and tradition, it was never easy. And not always welcome: once when residing in Ubud at Puri Kaleran, he tried to initiate some girls into painting. "It was back in the Fifties. Some of the girls were quite talented - but unfortunately the banjar community objected." Not only was painting not a woman's role, but for these young maidens to be working in the house of a bachelor was out of the question!
Rio Helmi
Ronni Pinsler -Lost Bali
Enable comment auto-refresher