Arie Smit (Dutch-Indonesian, 1916-2016)

The Holy Tree

Footnotes

Provenance:
Private Collection, New York, USA
Acquired from the above by the present owner

艾利 · 斯密特　聖樹　油彩畫布　木框　一九六七年作

簽名：Arie '67

來源：
美國紐約私人收藏
現藏家得自上述


Three words - light, poetry and mystery - sum up the works of Dutch-born, nativised Indonesian painter Arie Smit's works that emanate from efforts to portray radiance.

The Holy Tree is an early, rare and iconic work in Arie Smit's 1960s oeuvre. A keen traveller in Bali itself, Smit was known for his inclination to be near his painting subject and moved at least 40 times in more than half a century living in Bali. He was fascinated with the fecund natural environment of Bali. To him, nature, with all its wondrous elements that controlled the seasons, agrarian patterns and cultural life, was far more interesting than all the cultural manifestations of life in Bali. Against such a backdrop, Smit's paintings exalted nature.

The sacred quality of old grand trees was exactly what he sought to paint, with the banyan tree - the subject here - rising majestically in the centre of his painting. The tree towers over life and blocks out much light, and Smit emphasises this with a generally darker colour palette deployed here. Unlike his later works, where he tried to capture the riotous light in Bali, Smit paints us a convincing picture of the gigantic towering tree, solid and perpetual in its presence.

A Balinese shrine provides counterpoint at the foreground, its comparatively much smaller size bestowing a greater sense of grandeur to the tree in the middleground. Nature reigns supremacy in Balinese life, at least in the early days of the 1960s when Smit was just at the formative period of his artistic journey capturing impressions of Bali that are some of the most distinct and recognisable around.

三個形容詞──光影、詩意和神秘──總結了荷蘭裔印尼畫家艾利 · 斯密特的創作，從勤力耕耘終展現光輝。《聖樹》為其1960年代藝術生涯中，較早期、珍罕又具標誌性的作品。峇里島富饒美麗的自然環境令他為之著迷。對斯密特而言，大自然掌管四季、農業型態和文化生活的美妙元素，較峇里島諸多的生活面貌更為引人入勝、耐人尋味。在此時空背景下，斯密特的繪畫歌頌著大地。

參天古樹的神聖靈氣恰恰是他熱衷於描繪的題材。此作的焦點──榕樹──在畫面中央蒼翠挺拔，傲然矗立，如巍峨巨人，遮蔽了大部份的陽光。藝術家採用較暗的色系，巧妙凸顯《聖樹》淩空聳立，雄奇豪邁的氣勢。