ART OF BALINESE

As result of the influence of cultures such as Chinese, Dutch, the Balinese people have,a natural human quality to use some of the elements from the different cultures together them with their own Bali Culture. A Bali artist never signed the work and usually lived closely together in special villages (visit a Balinese painters compound - choose one or several Bali tours - find our Bali Tour Packages in the menu to the left of the link below). Artistically, Bali is a mixture of cultures and traditions.

The modernization of Balinese art emanated from three villages: Ubud paintings, where Spies settled, Sanur paintings on the southern coast, and Batuan paintings, a traditional hub of musicians, dancers, carvers and Balinese painters. The artists painted mostly on paper, though canvas and board were also used. Often, the works featured repetitive clusters of stylized foliage or waves that conveyed a sense of texture, even perspective. Each village evolved a style of its own. Ubud paintings are made more with Balinese painters use of open spaces and emphasized human figures. Balinese paintings made in Sanur were/are often featured "adults" scenes and animals, and Batuan paintings were less colorful but tended to be busier.

Balinese Paintings

Batuan village a famous Balinese Artwork / Balinese paintings and as such a famous Bali tourism destinations, located about 7 kilometers north of Denpasar about and 10 kilometers south of Ubud, it is popular with center of Bali arts, and now it’s known for its dancing, wood panel carving and Bali paintings ubud. We have lots of tours to Batuan and Ubud painters - where you'll see the beautiful paintings and they have Bali paintings for sale too.

For over a thousand years Batuan has been a village of Balinese Artwork and Bali handicrafts. Batuan village has a thousand year old history in accordance with the recorded history - begins in A.D. 1022, with an inscription that is housed in the main village temple, Pura Desa Batuan/Batuan Village Temple. In the Age of Warmadewa Dynasty in Bali, Desa Batuan / Batuan Village had to be there. Batuan eventually came to be called Batuan, from the word of Batu / rock, because - in that time - in this region is a rocky area (the famous Balinese sand stones are still produced here in northern of Batuan), then because of daily changes in the pronunciation then more popularly known as Batuan Village.

Balinese Painters

For several centuries, Bali artists and craftsmen in Bali worked under the priests and ruling classes, decorating palaces and temples. As their designs followed the religious guidelines, the Bali artists generally did not have much room for personal expression - by painters and illustrators called ‘Sangging’. The ‘Sangging’ were expected to decorate everything from gourds, wooden altars, bamboo vessels, headboards for princely bed chambers.

Besides the Bali dance, performed in the central part of the village, Batuan is also famous for its unique Balinese Paintings - called ‘Batuan style’.

With the arrival of European artists on Bali island in the early 1900s - and western influences reached Bali, famed painters as Paul Gauguin and Camille Picasso used Asian symbols in the works and started a new trend for Asian-influenced art and for European painters to move to Bali.

Balinese Paintings

Batuan wasn't influenced by the western as they were in Ubud. The Batuan paintings were often dark, crowded representations of either legendary scenes or themes from daily life, freakish animal monsters, and witches accosted people. The Batuan paintings were gradations of black to white ink washes laid over most of the surface, so as to create an atmosphere of darkness and gloom. In the later years, the designs covered the entire space, which often contributed to the crowded nature of these Balinese paintings.

The Batuan artisans are known for their Balinese Artwork. Leading artists of the 1930s members of leading Brahman families, including Ida Bagus Made Togog, I Dewa Nyoman Mura (1877-1950) and I Dewa Putu Kebes (1874-1962), which were traditional Wayang-style Balinese painters for temples’ ceremonial textiles.
from: http://www.tourguidesbali.com