1968, oil on canvas, depicts three ladies engaged in Legong style of Balinese dance, a style of dance characterized by intricate finger movements, complicated footwork, and expressive gestures and facial expressions, signed and dated to lower right, framed without glass.

Frame dimensions 38 1/2 x 46 in., Image size 31 1/4 x 38 1/2 in.

From the Estate of William and Joan Sommers

Purchased in 1968 from the Trio Gallery, Bangkok, thence by descent.

Mochtar Apin was a significant force in the development of modern art in Indonesia. In particular, he played a major part in bridging the modernist tendency with the social movement gravitating around realist art in Indonesia all through the 1950s and 60s. Coming within the critical years of Apin's balancing these two divergent perspectives, the painting offered here of Legong dancers illustrates Mochtar Apin's oeurve that straddles abstraction and figuration. The work combines sensitivity to color and form that relates to the geometric abstraction that Apin was practicing and is a precursor to the body of nude paintings he would explore in the 1970s and 80s.

Good condition; frame has some separation at left side and tape at top and bottom.

$5,000 - 8,000