Leo Haks gathered as one of the first pre-war, modern Balinese drawings. The damaged part of his collection he showed by restoring us in 2009-2010 before he left auction his collection of drawings in Singapore.
The drawing shown here was created by Ida Bagus Nyoman Rai (Sanur, 1915-2000), and has a dimension of 56 x 76 cm.
Ida Bagus Nyoman Rai was born into a poor brahmana family between 1907 and 1920 in Sanur village and began painting as a teenager. During the 1930s Sanur, like many Balinese villages, produced a great number of artists; most were very young and new to art. Inspired by Bali’s aesthetic qualities, they created for new audiences, including Western newcomers who, using their economic and artistic influence, favoured images of a romanticized and timeless Bali similar to those produced by western artists residing there. Dozens of highly original Balinese artists rejected this romanticisation and instead portrayed the modern reality in which they found themselves, creating hundreds of works in a style that became known as the Sanur School of Painting.*
The drawings are cleaned, flattened and gaps have been filled and retouched. In the auction catalog these restorations have been documented.
*overgenomen uit: Pre-war Balinese Modernist Paintings, the Collection of Leo Haks, 22 October 2011, Singapore. p. 98 (Adrian Vicker and Leo Haks)