Ida Bagus Made Nadera

Ida Bagus Made Nadera (Tegallingah, Gianyar, 1910, 1998)
Sanghyang Dedari and Sanghyang Jaran Dance Performances on a Village Square.
Executed in, or before 1934
Wash technique and tempera on board, framed.
87 x 87 cm.
In the 1930s painting lost its religious function and artists wanted nothing more than to portray daily life. The present lot is a fine example of an early form of Balinese 'realism'. It is in fact the earliest modern painting known by Nadera, as it is safe to assume that Nadera switched from the traditional to the new style in 1933. Nadera pursued a long and productive career as a painter, running through all the various aspects of 'Bali life', and making use of his exceptional knowledge of the Balinese classic stories. The present lot seems all the more a highly individual expression, whereas the post Pita Maha oeuvre of Nadera is characterised monumental compositions more in the style of Bonnet. With regard to Nadera's work Claire holt notices that: "(...) human faces are mere schemes, seldom differentiated and, if so only as generalised types." In the present composition however, a full scale of different characters is on display and the focus on the detailing is here pushed to a m
The Sanghyang Dedari and Sanghyang Jaran dance performances are both trance dances here accompanied by a choir singing trance hymns. On the right the Dedari is passing a gate on the shoulders of an attendant, leaving the temple where she has been put into a trance. The dancer is tilted with her flower-covered crown above the crowd, her eyes shut, her arms already moving in dance. The Sanghyang Jaran is generally performed by a boy or a priest. The dancer here enters also on the shoulders of an attendant, and carries a hobby-horse made of wood or bamboo attached to the body of the dancer.
The present lot may be compared with a composition of a funeral procession from the same hand in the Collection Haks & Maris (inv. no. H&M 122). A composition from 1940 by the same hand compares to the present lot in the sense that it also integrates two different dance performances (illustrated in: Dr. R. Goris, Bali, een cultuurgeshiedenis in beeld, illus. No. 507).
A. A. Muning, curator of the Puri Lukisan, Ubud, Bali, kindly confirmed the attribution.