Maria Hofker helps bring Bali to the world

By Boudewijn Brands

AMSTERDAM (JP): This is a story of another of those foreign painters who fell in love with Bali.

The works of Maria Hofker, 95, were among those which brought Bali to the world, though she has been largely overshadowed by her husband's art.

Her sketches and watercolors have been collected in several books, including Indonesian Impressions, published in 1994 in the Netherlands. It is a selection of text and illustrations of four of her surviving booklets: Bandung and Pangandaran; Bali, Woman at Work; Remembrances of Legong and Djanger and Ballad of the Farmer.

Her works reflect a keen eye for nature's beauty and the life of hard working farmers. Until now, Hofker has had 35 exhibitions, mainly held in the Netherlands.

Her work was reproduced in book form for the first time, together with reproductions of some of her husband's work, in 1978 shortly before he died in 1981. The book was titled Bali, published by the Omniboek in The Hague.

Born in 1902, Maria Rueter was maybe a typical child of her time in a family of artists. As a child she always liked art and nature but at that time art was not thought of as a career possibility for a woman.

So Maria learned a trade: bookbinding and calligraphy. She worked commercially from her parents' home for five years after finishing her education.

In 1930, she met and married Willem Hofker and helped him with his career as a painter. As was expected from a good Dutch woman in those days, she lived for her husband.

But then came Indonesia. In 1936 Willem Hofker got an assignment to paint a portrait of Queen Wilhelmina for offices in Batavia, the name for Jakarta during colonial times. In January 1938 they sailed with the painting to hand deliver it.

In Indonesia, Maria found a lot of time on her hands. When in Bandung, she made her first sketches and watercolors.

She sent watercolors of fruits in letters to her parents. These are still well preserved today. The couple continued to travel to Bali and stay with a painter in his simple bamboo house in Klandis Kedaton.

The house was on the grounds of the temple well known locally for famous legong dancers as Ni Sadri and Ni Cawan.

The Hofkers got acquainted with the few scientists and artists staying in Bali at the time, including American anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Artists from all nationalities seemed to be attracted to the island, such as Walter Spies, Locatelli, Strasser, le Mayeur de Merpres, Dooijewaard and Rudolf Bonnet.

Maria reflected on the fascination with Bali: "You felt the wisdom of the East, a wisdom I could not grasp completely, but for which I opened myself and from which radiated enormous power. It was a completely new and inspiring experience; we forgot about returning home."

The couple eventually lived in Ubud. Maria started to write short stories on life in Bali and these "impressions", as she called them, were published in magazines and a newspaper. She provided calligraphies and illustrations for some of these stories, then bound them in Balinese cloth.

On Feb. 19, 1942, Japanese forces occupied Bali and the couple were imprisoned.

They were released six weeks later when the Japanese commander of Bali turned up and said their policy did not include jailing artists.

Before Christmas 1943, Willem and Maria were separated and put in different civilian camps in Sulawesi. Here, Maria's camp was bombed and most of her work destroyed. In February 1946, they returned to the Netherlands, never to see Bali again.

Their life was transferred from the open, warm tropics to a cold brick apartment. However, they felt spiritually enriched and gradually both succeeded to get new jobs.

In 1948, Maria got a garden on the outskirts of Amsterdam. This much coveted garden, which became the subject of a few of her books, enabled her to combine her artistic talents developed in Indonesia with her love for nature.

She put a rich choice of plants in her garden, leaving a lot to nature, not making it too organized. She wrote her observations in a diary and made beautifully calligraphed and illustrated yearbooks which were published. She did this as much for commercial reasons as for herself.

She did not sell many of her paintings; the couple lived off the sales of her husband's works, which has still been a subject of interest by the Glerum art auction house in the Netherlands.