Sapardi the wordsmith
No one doubts the maestro’s role in Indonesian literature scene. Born in 1940, Sapardi’s skills in experimenting with words seems to have been engraved since he was in junior high school.
In this exhibition, visitors can see Sapardi’s works that span decades. One of the highlights is Sapardi’s manuscript that was compiled before he published his first book in 1969. Visitors can see Sapardi’s handwriting from 1957 to 1968 written on a school notebook using pencil and blue ballpoint.
His writing journey is well summed even until he became a lecturer at the University of Indonesia in the 1970s, a tenured lecturer at IKJ since 2009 and published many masterpieces. One of the most popular was “Hujan Bulan Juni” (Rain in June) which was later transformed into various mediums, including films.
Wagiono Sunarto, the key figure behind Indonesia’s graphic design industry
Within Indonesia’s graphic design scene, Gion is one of the figures who ushered the beginning of the development of graphic design in the country around the 1970s. He, for example, was one of the initiators of the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) Art Market, an art event that is still being held today.
In the exhibition, visitors can see a portrait of Gion’s passion in creating visual images since he was in high school. The exhibition features hundreds of Gion graphic design works from various periods, starting from the early days when he was a fine arts student at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) to works made for print media illustrations.
“Pak Gion is prolific. His works span a period from when he was in high school to when he started working, until before he died. Apart from collections from family archives, there are also my own archives because I worked with these two figures before,” said Indah.