Basuki Resobowo

Basuki Resobowo
Resobowo (top left) with his Kedok Ketawa co-star Fatimah, 1941
Born	1916
Died	5 January 1999 (aged 82–83) Amsterdam, Netherlands
Nationality	Indonesian
Occupation	Painter, production designer, writer
Years active	1940s–1990s

Basoeki Resobowo (Perfected Spelling: Basuki Resobowo; 1916 – 5 January 1999) was a famous Indonesian painter. Born to a transmigrant father in Sumatra, he showed much interest and talent in the visual arts from a young age. He was educated to become a secondary school teacher. After a short time at a Taman Siswa school in Batavia (now Jakarta), he studied graphic design and worked as a surveyor while producing sketches and colorful book covers. He only acted in a single film, Kedok Ketawa, but remained close to the acting community, first as a set designer and stage decorator during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies then for Perfini in the early 1950s.

During the 1940s and 50s Resobowo became recognised as a painter, working with such artists as Trisno Sumardjo and Oesman Effandi and Wesikowa Rukendi. By the late 1950s he was head of the visual arts department of the Institute for the People's Culture. However, the political climate of Indonesia soon made Resobowo's leftist leanings dangerous, and he went into exile beginning in the 1960s, ultimately settling in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. There he wrote extensively on art and sculpture until his death. He also wrote newspaper articles, specifically a column entitled "Many reasons for not to paint."

Resobowo was born to Prawiroatmojo and his wife, their second child, in 1916. Sources disagree as to where he was born, but several scholars agree about a village in West Sumatra. The Jakarta City Government's Encyclopedia of Jakarta states his place of birth as Palembang, West Sumatra, but Taman Ismail Marzuki's biography of the artists gives a birthplace of Bengkulu, with Palembang and Lampung as locations in which he lived as a child with his transmigrant family and several puppies he mentions in his numerous writings. As a child, he enjoyed drawing and playing the french horn, an instrument he was shy to admit playing.