Italian artist Renato Cristiano's testaments of life

Italian artist Renato Cristiano's testaments of life

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): Renato Cristiano was born in Rome in 1926 and
attended courses at Museo Artistico Industriale and the Academy
of Fine Arts in Perugia.

On a scholarship from the French government, he moved in 1950
to Paris where he became acquainted with many artists. His
adventurous spirit led him to leave Paris to travel around the
world.

After a long journey through Africa, West and South Asia,
Sumatra and Java, Cristiano finally arrived in Bali in 1955,
where he met Rudolph Bonnet. Upon Bonnet's return to the
Netherlands in 1957, leaving plans for the Museum Puri Lukisan in
Ubud uncompleted, Cristiano became the curator of the museum.
During this time, Indonesia's first president Sukarno often
called Cristiano to his retreat in Tampaksiring, asking the
artist for advice on his art collection. They engaged in
discussions about philosophy, art, esthetics and beauty.

That same year, Cristiano also spent considerable time in the
eastern part of the island, and started to build his studio in
Putung. His works completed in Putung were exhibited in Rome two
years later, but upon his return he found his studio, a simple
and fragile hut constructed out of bamboo, had been seriously
damaged from exposure to the elements and humidity. He built a
new studio by the beach at Manggis.

The new studio was completed at the end of 1962, not long
before Mt. Agung's great eruption of 1963, which destroyed the
city of Karangasem. The flow of hot lava razed the Klungkung
bridge, leaving Manggis isolated. In the midst of this calamity,
Cristiano married Wayan Nesa of Manggis.

After the 1965 political turmoil in Indonesia, it became
dangerous to live in Manggis. The artist and his wife left Bali
for Rome.

But Bali remains deep in his heart, and this is clearly seen
in his paintings (he continues to return to the island to paint).
Currently on exhibit at the Mon Decor Gallery at Jl. Gunung
Sahari Raya No. 1 Blok B 13 - 14 in North Jakarta (tel. 629-9660)
until July 10 are his Testament series which convey his memories,
fantasies and visions of life in Bali.

The series dates back to the early years of his career, as
Bonnet noted in his biographical sketch of Cristiano:

"In 1953 Cristiano was in French Morocco, in Marrakech, where
he painted the first series of Testamenti. This peculiar and
important new renaissance expression, a result of the Arabian
iconoclastic climate, was the creative reaction of an abstract
but 'free' painter against the conventional and stiff new academy
-- similarly iconoclastic -- of the abstract art.

"In this singular expression -- which rises in settling with a
considerable advance the symbols and the image of today's
cultural and moral emancipation, and of the final corruption of
our era -- Cristiano applies the informal painting principles to
the traditional representation of figure, decomposing the
surfaces and sublimating their pigment to evoke forms from
chromatic mixtures to fix them in the weavings of a complex
texture, as in alchemic transmutation."

Cristianto was interviewed from Rome via fax.

Q Your exhibition this time is titled Testaments. What are
your reasons for choosing the title?

A: The title "Testaments", given to several pieces which I've
painted in about 50 years, comes from two paintings originally
made in 1953 which were inspired by the pathos of mankind and
referred to western holy books, in a modern review of world
cultures and religion, and expressing the eternal human error and
vanity. (They are) pieces characterized by a flora of images
submitted to corruption of time.

How would you define this series? How does it differ from the
other series?

During my work development, and through many and different
series, "Testaments" recurred often, as a leitmotif, in my
art ... becoming the master cycle and the main style of my
painting. All the other series, like the abstractionism, the
light of colors and the archipitture (rainbow or spectrum
painting) are intellectual adventures in both informal and
figurative expressions in an exploration of the hidden ways of a
new visual art.

How do you see your art, in the context of the development of
art in Indonesia, and in the world? What achievement are you most
proud of in terms of your artistic career?

When I came to Indonesia, 46 years ago, local art appeared
between western academy and eastern tradition. The most modern
tendency in painting was expressed by Affandi. At the time, from
two years before, I had left abstractionism to develop the
"Testaments" (it was also called by critics "New Renaissances",
because it was exhibited in an art climate constituted by many
contrasting tendencies, while customs and culture were starting
to reach the present corruption).

Now modern art has a strong influence in Indonesia, but like
at my first coming, when I enjoyed the enchanting nature of the
Indonesian archipelago, I still love to evoke some old images
which -- specially in Bali -- offer to visitors a remembrance of
a lost world.

You left Bali at a very difficult and dangerous time. What did
you feel at that time? How did it affect your art?

Since 1963, when Mount Agung erupted, Bali started to lose her
crystallized world. It was impossible to live on the island in
1965-1966. Due to this situation, I painted very few pieces in
those years. After I went back to Italy, I did work after some
months.

What are you trying to accomplish with and convey through your
art?

Since I started to paint, these works have been a medium of
reflection to establish a philosophical process. Painting and
philosophy have been the inner path of my expression of which the
clearness is communicated by images and its contents are for me
the best achievement.

What do you think of Indonesia nowadays? Has this affected
your artwork in any way?

While in Europe, modern art has touched the bottom of
decadency with its last ephemeral hyperbolas. I see with pleasure
the living ferment of Indonesian art, sign of a spiritual
uprising of a new culture, which may help the union and the
growth of this beautiful land.