Young Girl in Red, 1968, pastel on paper
by Amir Sidharta
Modern art
At the end of the same year, he exhibited at the Prasta Pandawa gallery
in Jakarta, on the invitation of Hendra Hadiprana, who had met Kay It and
seen his works. This show was reviewed favorably and half of the paintings
were sold. Among the purchasers was Affandi, a pioneer of modern Indonesian
art. Kay It held successful exhibitions in Jakarta in 1966, 1967 and 1969.
During this early period, Kay It's works were clearly influenced by his
interest in modern Western art. His Flowers in A Vase (1964), for example,
shows inspiration from van Gogh, in subject matter, and from Matisse, in
style. One of Modigliani's reclining nude paintings appears in the background
of Kay It's Faded Flowers (1965) . The techniques of George Rouault have
evidently been applied in his Grandmother (1965).
According to Australian anthropologist David Stuart-Fox, who wrote a book
on Kay It, the artist's knowledge of Western art was limited to secondhand
information obtained mainly from books. It seems Kay It's encounter with
Affandi also made an impression on him. The strokes of Affandi, as well
as the maestro's palette, consists primarily of brownish yellows, reds and
greens, inspired the young artist when he painted Njoman Singen 1966).
Although heavily influenced by other artists, Kay It started his own
presence in his art. While certain elements in Village Swimming Hole seem
to have been influenced by Matisse's Dance, the reflects what one reviewer
in that year called the painter's "somber view of Balinese life".
Despite his interest in western art, the artist was already starting to
develop his own esthetics and style. This is evident in Festival Decoration
(1965), Temple Ritual (1966) and Night Creatures (1966).
In about 1967, Kay It began to work with terracotta craftspeople from Pejaten,
a village southeast of Tabanan, leading to the creation of the figures mentioned
at the beginning of the article. Kay It met Kerry Hill -the architect of
the Bali Hyatt - at the home of Australian artist Donald Friend in Batujimbar,
Sanur, in the early 1970s. The meeting resulted in a commission for decorative
terracotta tiles for the entrance to the Sanur Beach Hotel. The painter's
interest in batik, which dates back to about 1971, led him to go to Yogyakarta
to study the traditional dyeing technique, which was gaining increasing
popularity as a medium for painting among the local artists there. Kay It
employed both brush and the traditional canting (small bamboo scoop for
batik) in his works. It seems clear that Kay It's mature style was influenced
by batik techniques which he learned in Java and Donald Friend's method
of layering.
From batik, he learned the use of resistant materials. On the basis of the
resistance principle, Kay It developed a method for his paper-based paintings
which was quite different from batik. He did, however, continue to use wax
as a resistant material. Not patient enough to work with slow-drying oils,
he used acrylics which he applied with rollers of various sizes on paper
and board. The layers of paint gave the works rich colors and textures.
Then the artist delineated the forms and images in his drawings with pencils
and completed them with final touches of paint.
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