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.