AFFANDI

Desa Di Bali (A Village in Bali) is a rare-to-market early work of the artist to come to auction, and striking for the detailed realism that early Affandi paintings are renowned for. Depicting a villager and a white dog in the foreground, Affandi situates the living beings in the painting within a verdant Balinese landscape, with lush overhanging flora and fauna. In his 1940s paintings, Affandi began to focus on capturing the atmosphere of a particular place and time. The distinct way of life of a village in Bali fascinated him and captured his pictorial interests. In works he executed from the 1950s onwards, he continued his interest in rendering the character of a certain environment or way of life, but has also developed a technique of painting direct from the tube which was more expressionistic. In Desa Di Bali, we glean a rare view of Affandi before his transformation into an full-fledged expressionistic artist.