Lucia Hartini, The Woman in the Realm of Surrealism

Herlambang Jaluardi

· 6 minutes read

The paintings of Lucia Hartini, 60, present another nature. Her brush strokes are the juncture between the daily reality and the universe out there. Her struggle as a woman, as an individual, wife, mother, and grandmother, is poured onto a large canvas.

The living room at her house has a high ceiling. That way, the owner of the house is free to display gigantic paintings on the wall. There are five large paintings — and two smaller ones — on display. The biggest one is a painting titled "Duh Gusti" which has a dimension of 3 x 3 meters.

The dominant blue oil painting depicts a woman bursting from the cloud. Her robe blends with the clouds. Her hands are folded in front of her chest. In the upper left corner, there is a perfectly round moon with a tinge of a smiling face.

"That is one of the paintings I like the most," Lucia said in the Bugisan area, Bantul regency, Yogyakarta, Tuesday (11/6/2019).

"We sometimes find a lot of life problems. Where we should go? We can only talk, \'duh, Gusti\'. When I was calm, found my way, found God, found Gusti, I felt peaceful. Gusti is kind," she continued explaining the painting, which she completed in 2017.

A piece of Lucia\'s bitterness is described in the paintings. She had a miscarriage. Her two marriages had broken down. The divorce made her a single mother for her three children. Lucia had to raise her name in the art community.

Such vulnerability is described in her painting "Payung Dua Ribu” (Two Thousand Umbrellas), which was completed in 1997. On the 2 x 1.5 meter canvas, Lucia described a figure with a long haired woman holding an umbrella made from a cloud of vortex.

There are four planets in the cloud vortex. The woman turns her face so that it is not clearly visible. The painting was published and reviewed by Sindhunata in the Feb. 2, 1997 edition of Kompas daily. At that time, Lucia told of the woman in the painting that represented another woman, who was suffering a lot in entering the new century. It was not a coincidence, at that time there was mass unrest related to the turn of the millennium.

Quiet

The painting with a prophetic nuance attracted a reaction. Based on a review in the newspaper, a group of people in Surabaya identified the character in the painting as Master Ching Hai, a leader of the Quan Yin meditation group that is quite popular. Some of his followers contacted Lucia. They then brought Lucia to meet with their teacher, who at that time happened to be in Surabaya.

"They were anxious about facing the year 2000. The message in the newspaper to prepare an umbrella before the rain was the same as what the teacher said. I was then introduced to other followers through telephone. Some followers came to my home. I then went to Surabaya to take part in a joint meditation," recalled Lucia, who claimed she had never mediated before the encounter.

The meditation could calm Lucia\'s anxiety. She then also becomes a vegetarian. "Apparently meditation and vegetarianism is good. Life is more relaxed, more peaceful, like finding true happiness,” she said.

To this day, she is firmly abstains from consuming animal products and meditates every day. The meditation opens new horizons in her works. Lucia feels her paintings are more meaningful. She draws what she "saw and felt" when meditating.

Space objects appear everywhere. There are also aisles, whirlwinds and clouds, waves, corals, gates, asteroids and moons. The universe is tangent to the microcosmos — humans and animals.

Surrealism

The art community considers Lucia\'s painting as surrealism like that popularized by Salvador Dali or Roger Dean, whose paintings were often used as the cover of the song albums rock band Yes. Lucia never really intended her works to be like that. At first, she didn\'t even know what surrealism was.

"I don\'t know about surrealism because I did not go to college. I started studying at the high fine art school (SSRI) but did not finish," she said. She was expelled because she was considered disobedient, especially related to a skirt as a uniform.

Indeed, she herself insisted to attend the art school despite her parents\' objection. Since childhood, besides fondly looking up into the sky, she was used to seeing his father painting puppets, while storytelling. Meanwhile, her mother made batik for her own use.

Lucia was willing to wait for her sister Sisilia Hariyanti, who was one year younger, to be able to join the ideal school. Her brother, Kuswanto, who at that time had begun painting, sympathized with the wishes of his younger siblings. Kuswanto took care of the registration and drove them to move to Yogyakarta from Temanggung. Every now and then, Kuswanto visited his sisters\' boarding house to bring rice.

While Lucia was expelled, her sister continued to attend the art school until she finished the Indonesian Academy of Fine Arts (now the Indonesian Art Institute, Yogyakarta).

Her sister\'s college friends were her friends too. That way, Lucia could maintain her passion for painting. The intention to hold an exhibition like those held by other artists started to appear. One time, her sister\'s friend Titik (the wife of painter Hari Budiono) saw Lucia\'s paintings.

Titik and Sindhunata encouraged Lucia to hold an exhibition. So the first exhibition was jointly held with her husband at Bentara Budaya Yogyakarta in 1983. From there Lucia found that her paintings were in surrealism style.

"Actually, I paint as I like, as I want. This is it. I just found out the name Surreal after the exhibition," she said. Now, she has her own definition. "Surrealists are actually real, just can\'t be seen by the eyes of people in general. Only certain people can see and get there," she said. She is now putting "surrealist artist" on the profile of the Instagram account made by her second child, Roro Handani, a year ago.

Lucia\'s life journey and spiritual practice are too long to be summarized in this paper, especially through uploads on social media. Therefore, she plans to put them onto a large canvas measuring 10 x 3 meters. To make it happen, she plans to finish a big studio she built in front of her house. "I’m waiting for more fortune to build the studio," she said. This is a real problem.

Lucia Hartini

Born: Temanggung, Central Java, 10 January 1959

Children: Loki Loko Rauda (40), Roro Handani (35), Alif (10)

Grandson: Alutfi Yufo Mahendra (15)

Achievement:

- Prathika Adhi Karya award, for the Best Work of Sketch (1976)

- Prathika Adhi Karya, for the work of Sketch and the Best Painting (1977)

- Jakarta Art Awards (2006)

Some Exhibitions:

- Solo exhibition of Lucia Hartini\'s paintings, Bentara Budaya Jakarta, 1992

- Exhibition with Confess and Conceal, Insights From Contemporary Australia and South East Asia at The Gallery of Western, Australia, 1993

- Solo Exhibition of “Batas antara Dua Sisi”, Bentara Budaya ,Yogyakarta, 1994

- Joint exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Bangkok, Thailand, 1994

- Spirit of Life solo exhibition, Bentara Budaya, Jakarta, 2002

- A joint fundraising exhibition for the Indonesian Cancer Foundation, Charity Indonesia, Jakarta, 2016

Editor:

painting kompascetak lucia hartini