Artist : Maurice Sterne
Genre : Paintings and Drawings
Period : July 12 till November 1
Everyday, 9.00AM till 9.00PM
Location : The Mood Studio
Jl. Raya Lungsiakan, Kedewatan, Ubud
Tel: 974445
Visitors to the small but impressive exhibition, ‘Sterne In Bali, 1912-1914’, at the Mood Studio in Ubud, will be surprised to discover that the first expatriate artist who lived in Bali was an American. His name was Maurice Sterne, and he lived and worked in Bali from 1912 to 1914, well before Walter Spies, Rudolf Bonnet, Willem Hofker or Le Mayeur ventured here.
Maurice Sterne (1878-1957) was an American Modernist, a painter of figures, landscapes and still-life. He was also a sculptor and lithographer. Maurice was born in Latvia. His family moved to Moscow, then in 1889 to New York. From 1892, Maurice initially studied Mechanical Drawing as an apprentice, and then painting and drawing at the National Academy of Design from 1894 till 1899. His first one-man exhibition was held at the Old Country Sketch Club, New York, in 1902. Maurice was awarded a scholarship from the Academy to study abroad. He set sail for Europe in 1904, for what would be a ten-year period of artistic experimentation. Firstly, in Paris, Maurice came under the influence of the Impressionist painters such as Degas, Renoir, and especially, Cezanne. Moving on to Italy, he was drawn to the classical style of Mantegna, Pollauiola and Piero della Francesca. Finally, in Greece, he studied 4th and 5th century Greek art and became interested in Sculpture. During his stay in Europe Maurice attempted to merge these influences and formulate his own style. In Germany, in 1910, he enjoyed the patronage of Alard Dubois-Reymond, who commissioned several paintings from him. With this money Maurice began his travels in 1911, first to Egypt, then to India, Burma, Java, and finally settling in Bali. Entranced by the peaceful, primitive lifestyle of Bali, Maurice sojourned here from the Autumn of 1912 until May 1914, capturing the native life on canvas. His early reputation in the art world comes from this Balinese work.
Oddly enough, you will not find Maurice Sterne’s works in any museum here in Bali, nor is he mentioned in most of the books on early Balinese art. His Balinese works are rare, and precious few exist outside of major American and European museum collections. Amongst his greatest achievements, Maurice Sterne was the first living artist to be given a one-man retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This was in 1933, and the exhibition received rave reviews. In the May 5, 1934 issue of The New Yorker, Lewis Mumford had this to say: “The vital part of that exhibition was the Balinese paintings. The fact is that these magnificent little paintings and drawings date from his great period in Bali, between 1912 and 1914, and they have, apparently, been stored in a trunk all these years. The artist has very modestly called these pictures Bali studies, but the fact is it is these studies that one must crown as the very height of Sterne’s work”.
The Mood Studio has managed to acquire seventeen of Maurice’s Bali drawings and two delicate paintings. The drawings, in-particular, show an artist endeavoring to over-come his academic influences. The charcoal and pencil strokes are bold and guttural, applied with much force onto the paper. A primitivism, then emerging in Western Art, is much in evidence. Maurice stylizes the body poses and facial characteristics of the Balinese to suggest a more decorative and universal tribalism. The two small paintings depict Balinese women involved with religious ceremonies. The casualness of the brushstrokes and paint splashes, and the carefree colors, reveal an artist enlarging his restricted Impressionistic palette and expanding his painting techniques. What is interesting is Maurice’s subject matter. Men enjoying the cockfights, while women are involved with prayers and offerings. Nothing has changed in Bali in the 90 years since Maurice’s visit. It is interesting that all expatriate artists in Bali, up to the present day, depict the same thing, give or take their individual styles. There is a ‘timelessness’ about Balinese culture that fascinates Western Artists. Maurice’s evocative painting, ‘Wanita Sedang Mebanten’, which depicts a kneeling woman blessing an offering, beautifully captures this mysterious Balinese spirit.
Unlike other expatriate artists who were to arrive later, Maurice didn’t remain long enough to have a lasting effect on the development of Western influenced Balinese art. It seems that once Maurice had achieved his goals, which were the freeing of academic restraints, he moved on. His Balinese ‘idyllic’ remains merely an interesting footnote to the history of Balinese art. What Maurice Sterne did provide though, to a fascinated and enthralled Western audience, was the initial Mythologizing of Bali as a ‘Romantic Paradise’. This was a theme to be pursued by many Western Cultural Figures resident in Bali during the years between the two World Wars. If you are in Ubud over the next few weeks check out this intriguing show.
