Biography of I Wayan Bendi

Full Name

I Wayan Bendi

Pen Name

Photograph by

Link to Photograph

Website for biography

Place

Related Music

Related Books

Related Scholars Articles

Sort by date Sort by score

Enable comment auto-refresher

Add your comment

BASAbaliWiki welcomes all comments. If you do not want to be anonymous, register or log in. It is free.

Biography

In English

I Wayan Bendi – 1950-2020 (Indonesia)

I Wayan Bendi was a living legend, the leading practitioner of the Batuan style of painting which developed in Bali in the 1920’s-1930’s.

He was born in 1950, in Batuan, a village near Ubud. He still remained rooted to his birthplace, where he had his studio and art gallery.

The Batuan style of painting is very intricate and detailed, crammed with many “stories”. Paintings in this style are tightly crowded with teeming crowds and scenes that depict all the traditional aspects of Bali life, like rice harvests, temple rituals, dancing girls and fantastical theater masks.

A Batuan picture usually has a sober monochrome color palette, because of the initial application of black and grey paint on the canvas surface as base. But Bendi is also an artist with a mischievous streak. For a Batuan artist, he is considered very colorful with his ‘soberly bold’ colors like brick red and light olive. Then there’s his ‘thing’ about helicopters. Bendi usually has one somewhere in his crowded agrarian scenes, and part of the fun is to hunt for it. Another favorite, the t-shirt clad, inquisitive tourist with his intrusive, long nosed camera lens, snapping away amid the water buffaloes and rickety taxis. It’s a Bendi trademark that speaks volumes about his concern for Bali’s relationship with the almighty tourist dollar.

Bendi expanded his focus to capture traumatic events that has impacted Indonesia, from the Bali bombing to the tsunami. Always, Bendi’s witty, observant paintings are like a macrocosm of modern Bali life.

The artist has exhibited in Japan, Netherlands, Belgium and New York.

In Balinese

In Indonesian

—

http://sunjingalleries.blogspot.com/2007/12/i-wayan-bendi-b-1950-indonesia.html

Examples of work

5386-43 Schilderij getiteld Modern Times 60.7 cm x 50.7 cm, 1991

Bendi is considered by other Batuan artists to be something of an outsider, due to his unconventional use of caricatures and sketches, which can be drawn quicker than the elaborate detail which is present in other works by Batuan artists. His works primarily depict the modern history of Indonesia and the behaviour of tourists. (Hohn 1997: 161) The eldest of the sons of Wayan Tawang to start painting. -- The Virtual Museum of Balinese Painting

https://bit.ly/30lUkp8 from the Virtual Museum of Balinese Painting

Barong Dance, mixed media. 90 x 64 cm

http://sunjingalleries.blogspot.com/2007/12/i-wayan-bendi-b-1950-indonesia.html