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The Young Artist School

DURING the period of inactivity in the 1930s, an utterly new style emerged in Penestanan near Ubud. Later is to become known as The Young Artists School. Teenage artists began to produce refreshingly bold paintings using strong primary colors and simple confident lines.

Encouraged by such resident artists is as Arie Smit (Dutch) and Donald Friend (Australian), this style was characterized by a joyful, childlike, artistry yet contained a youth's insightful view of reality.

The story goes that the style was founded one day in 1956 when Arie Smit was painting a landscape outside Ubud. A 12-year-old boy shepherding a waddle of ducks nearby watched him and began drawing village scenes and people in the dirt. Smit asked him if he would like to come to is work for him and learn how to draw on paper and use colors.

Permission first had to be obtained from the boy's father, who only granted it after it was agreed that Smit pay for hiring another boy to take care of the family's ducks. Soon the talented boy, through the sale of his paintings, was able to buy a cow for his father. Within three years the group of "Young Artists" consisted of 25 boys.

Smit's first and most devoted pupil, Nyoman Cakra, still lives and works in Penestanan. The best Young Artists paintings show the same masterful sense of color and love of imaginary animals, mysterious spirits, and ordinary country life, as did their artistic forebears.

The striking characteristic of this school is the primitive, flat colors used-a practice, which prevails to this day. These simple and naive paintings, particularly the landscapes, are produced quickly and in large quantities.

Critics have gushed that the Young Artists constitute "perhaps the most fascinating and brilliant example of peasant art to be found in the world today".

Something you should know: Young Artists' pictures, ever popular with tourists, are frequently priced the same as other works of superior quality that take one to two months to paint and demonstrate a much deeper knowledge of anatomy and perspective.

The theme of this school painting:

Tropical Birds In 1985, large pastel paintings of birds started appearing all over Bali. Once popular with interior and hotel designers, the birds have now fallen out of vogue, though the images are very attractive and suitable for some settings.

Modernists This school takes in Affandi and Aziz to Mohamed. Usually Javanese, not Balinese, artists. One of the best known Modernists is the multi-media artist Abdullah Aziz from Jakarta who lives in Mas. Aziz paints pictures of Balinese boys and girls flirting; also into boat-building, music, and painting women. Fine technique.

Naked Women It is a favorite subject of painters in Bali since the 1930s. Schlocky, clumsy paintings are sold in galleries and on foot proliferate. No one has ever emulated the Dutch artist Hofker in the rendition of the graceful Balinese female form.