Literature : Hotel Padma, Widayat : Retrospective Exhibition, Hotel Padma, Bali, 2002

Highly regarded and widely recognised, Haji Widayat stood out amongst his contemporaries in the era of ‘new national art’ that emerged in post-independence Indonesia. He is most commonly recognised for creating what art historians have termed “Dekora-magis” (magical-decorative), an aesthetic that places its subjects in a fantastical, often naturalistic setting.

Throughout his career, the artist appropriated many visual stylings, almost always rendering them on a flat two-dimensional plane. In Wajah Merah, he approaches cubism, rendering a red face on a flat plane as scenes of nature and other faces fade in and out of legibility.