VISITING POLISH ABSTRACT PAINTER CAPTIVATED BY MODERN INDONESIA
By Hanka Kawecka-Lee [10pt ML]
JAKARTA (JP): The Polish painter Jozef Kulesza says he is enchanted by Indonesia and flabbergasted by the progress it has made in the past 40 years. He finds the people friendly and relaxed, and not in an obsessive hurry as they are in Europe.
He is dumbstruck by the architecture of central Jakarta, describing the buildings as "singularly beautiful", and "uniformly harmonious".
Both the artist and his wife are guests of the Duta Gallery, where he will shortly be exhibiting his colorful, textured abstracts, painted both here and in Poland.
For the past month, Kulesza has been painting not in his Warsaw studio, but in Jakarta. He says, however, that his paintings are not influenced by Indonesia, yet. "Maybe when I return to my native country, some of what I have seen and experienced here will find its way into my art."
So far, the 74 year old painter's impressions of Indonesia have been favorable. But he is a little apprehensive whether his art will appeal to the public. Most of the paintings he has so far seen in Indonesia have been figurative: "I am worried that people may try to understand my abstracts, which they cannot. Abstract art is like food -- you just have to feel it, to taste it. Even in Poland", he continues, "where people are much more used to abstract art, those who cannot get a feeling for it get frustrated, saying, 'My child could paint this'."
The tall, thin and distinguished Kulesza, a chain smoker, has not always been an abstract artist or a painter at all. Although he comes from an artistic family, he did not become a full-time painter until he was 57 and retired from his government job.
It was this previous career that brought him to Jakarta forty years ago.
Vanished town
From 1953 to 1955, Kulesza was the first Polish trade representative to Indonesia. He remembers a vanished town. "In the 1950s, Jakarta to me was no more than an oversized village. I stayed in one of the two classy hotels: des Indes was its name. I believe it is no longer there. There was no air-conditioning in the hotel, but what bothered me the most were the huge spiders in the bathroom, and swarms of mosquitoes in the bedroom.
"I recall tucking the mosquito net in very thoroughly every night. Although I mainly traveled by taxi so as to make a good impression on my clients, the most popular form of transport then was the cycle rickshaw....
"There was no Polish embassy in Jakarta; we were just beginning to trade with Indonesia in rubber, fruit and textiles. As I was interested in art, young painters were always camping in front of my office, and I bought a number of their watercolors. It was not great art, but I enjoyed their company."
The only renowned painter he recalls meeting was Effendi. "We used to have a cup of coffee at the old airport. Then, that was the place to have good coffee."
For the last ten years of his government service, Kulesza was the director of DESA, an enterprise that sold Polish art abroad and organized art exhibitions. That, he reckons, was his art school. With no previous formal artistic education, only painting watercolor landscapes as a hobby, the directorship of DESA gave him the opportunity to study the best paintings in Europe and receive coaching from the most famous Polish painters of the time.
It was just three years ago, Kulesza having established a strong reputation, that Hamel of Jakarta's Duta Gallery visited his Warsaw studio. Although the artist was not there at the time, the part-owner of the Duta Gallery so much liked the studio and its paintings that an invitation to paint and exhibit in Jakarta followed.
And so Kulesza returned -- largely out of curiosity.
Exotica
For the past forty years, Kulesza's contact with Indonesians has been through the diplomats who visit his studio, and by occasional visits to the Asia Pacific Museum in Warsaw, where an impressive collection of Indonesian art has been established by another Polish diplomat, Andrzej Wawrzyniak.
"Is there much interest in Indonesian art in Poland?", I asked. "Poles love exotica, and Indonesia epitomizes it for them, even if they do not understand it. On a more carnal level, there is one Indonesian restaurant in Warsaw, and a few Chinese eating places. But that already spells progress. Asia is far away and, after all, there is no Polish restaurant in Jakarta."
He spoke of the impact Poland's recent political changes are making on the art world. "Most Polish artists have always stood in opposition to the system. Yes, the new system allows more initiative, but financially it is not easy for them. In the past, some art was subsidized by the state, and government agencies often gave large orders for works of art. Now every gallery and all the painters have to fend for themselves."
He said there are many fine Polish painters, but unfortunately "only a few are well known to the rest of the world. Polish artists often become famous when they start living abroad."
The exhibition will be opened by the Polish Charge d'Affaires, Mariusz Wozniak on April 14.