Posts Tagged ‘Germany’
Raden Saleh’s legacy remains alive in Germany
Raden Saleh Sharif Bustaman, the grandfather of modern Indonesian painting, was the first Javanese who had studied in Europe in the 19th century. Every city in Indonesia have a street that is named as the name suggests, every Indonesian knows his name, though often merely in name only. He is more known for his ever sent to the Netherlands to study painting with European style.
But who knew that actually Raden Saleh spent much time in Germany and in France, four years between the time he lived in Dresden and its surroundings. Only a few of the Indonesian people who never travel to the small town Maxen, an hour’s drive from Dresden, where the local museum’s first exhibition ever held in memory of those times where Raden Saleh lived in the area of Saxony. Many German tourists who had never heard that a Javanese painter had lived in Germany from 1839 until 1845. “Raden Saleh should be given respect and a greater appreciation by organizing exhibitions exhibitions at major museums in Dresden, Dusseldorf or Berlin, but yet nobody seems interested to arrange it,” said Jutta Tronicke, which makes the concept of exhibition ever held until October 2004.
For a Java nowadays, Maxen (with a population of 600 people) can look very small. This village, located on the outskirts of the Swiss Saxony, almost untouched by the changing times. In the 14th century is known that this land is owned by a knight. At the time of Raden Saleh arrived in Dresden due to escape from the Dutch colonial officials, the land is owned by Major Friedrich Anton Serre and his wife Friederika.
Luckily with a passionate spirit of the Family Serre (Serre’s family has a very large castle near Dresden.. Mrs. Serre is a patron of art at the time), Maxen a meeting location for an international artist who frequently visited the club in Dresden, including the creator song Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt, poet Ludwig Tieck and the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. But the most exotic member is most likely painter from Java.