Jeihan Sukmantoro (Tribunnews/Gani Kurniawan)

The Indonesian art scene has been dealt another blow with the passing of legendary painter Jeihan Sukmantoro.

Jeihan passed away on Friday evening at the age of 81 at his studio in Bandung, West Java. He is survived by his wife Sri Sunarsih, six children and 11 grandchildren.

Jeihan had suffered complications from lymphatic cancer. His eldest son Atasi Amin said he had been discharged from Santo Borromeus Hospital in Bandung after treatment had no effect.

“Bapak wanted to be brought into the studio, as he wanted to rest for his final moments there,” he said as quoted by jabar.tribunnews.com.

A funeral procession took place on Saturday morning, taking Jeihan to his final resting place at a pendopo (pavilion) near his studio as per his last requests.

Born in Surakarta, Central Java, in 1938, Jeihan had been a prolific painter since childhood.

His love of painting encouraged him to enroll in the Bandung Institute of Technology’s (ITB) School of Art and Design in 1960, although he later dropped out.

In 1978, Jeihan founded his own studio, Studio Seni Rupa Bandung, where he painted many of his iconic paintings from there on.

Poet Sapardi Djoko Damono posted on social media a picture of him and Jeihan from 1959, when he was a student at Gadjah Mada University (UGM) and the latter in his pre-ITB days.

“We promised to be friends until the end of days, and he was the first to publish my book dukaMu Abadi [Your Grief is Eternal]. I cannot be left in grief, as he is waiting for me there,” he wrote on his Instagram account @damonosapardi.

Amir Sidharta, director of SIDHartA Auctioneers, told The Jakarta Post that he had first met Jeihan in the late 1970s, when the painter visited his house for an appointment with his neurologist father.

“A few years later in the early 1980s, we visited his house and studio. He asked me what I was interested in. As I loved wayang, he gave me a book on wayang,” he recalled.

During his visit, Jeihan made a sketch of Amir, though his parents did not buy the final painting and it was said to have eventually ended up in the hands of a German national.

“Pak Jeihan is someone that could absorb the personalities of the people he met into a sketch, which he would then turn into a painting. I think that is the case in every single one of his paintings.”

Art critic Agus Dermawan remembered Jeihan as one of the most influential modern painters of the 1960s, highlighting his philosophical nature in his works.

“The philosophy he offered tugs at the mind, as they are deeply intertwined with humanity,” he said, noting that this could be seen in his painting subjects’ hollow eyes.

“Jeihan had that philosophical potential as he was a literary aficionado and surrounded himself with many writers. He was also consistent in his style, which gave way to works that become better and suggestive with age. For Jeihan, a painting is a philosophy bible and his philosophy is an oral painting.”

Jeihan’s signature elements were the deep, pitch-black eyes of his subjects, no matter the individual and painting.

This feature was first seen in his paintings during his stay in Cicadas, a densely populated area east of Bandung. The paintings, dating as early as 1963, were exhibited at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara (Museum MACAN) earlier this year.

The earliest painting to feature these black eyes was a self-portrait titled Aku (Me). Jeihan said during a media event in April that the painting had been created in a university studio, and that it was never finished.

In Jeihan’s biography, Jeihan: Ambang Waras dan Gila (Jeihan: The Edge of Sanity and Insanity), philosopher and art critic Jakob Sumardjo wrote that the painting was left unfinished due to the anti-Chinese violence that spilled into the halls of ITB and onto the streets of Bandung on May 10, 1963. At the time, Jeihan took to the streets to walk with his fellow students who were of Chinese descent to keep them safe.

Another painting created two years later, simply titled Gadis (Girl), also featured the black eyes. Jeihan said that it was either “a mistake or coincidence” because he started using the signature in 1965, after which the coup attempt and the Sept. 30 movement happened.

By then, the signature black eyes had become a mainstay of all of Jeihan’s paintings. He was savaged by art critics of the time who said that the eyes made the subjects appear ghostly.

However, it was Jeihan who had the last laugh, as his paintings went on to become some of the most sought-after pieces in the Indonesian art scene.

“During my early days of exhibiting, I was mostly laughed at and my paintings didn’t sell. By my eighth exhibition, people loved my paintings. They are quite simple, but collectors keep buying them at high prices,” Jeihan said in April.

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