The burnished yellow sun on the right, an energy metaphor in Affandi’s repertoire, beats down mercilessly as the water buffalo, cuts the composition diagonally bottom as an anthropomorphic symbol of hard work and perseverance to plough the intractable earth for the laying of new seeds, for germination. Everywhere, staccato squiggles and curvilinear lines enunciate some kind of forms while the colours had gravitated towards brighter hues in Affandi’s later palette, this a decade before his death. Rice-growing is a staple in Indonesia as the world’s third largest grower, after China and India, with a high consumption estimated at 200kg per head annually. It’s a struggle, from tilling till harvesting, with man hours of labour, dependence on the weather and even prayers to the rice goddess Dewi Sri. Known for his direct, spontaneous touches with fingers (palms, wrists, back of hands) and straight from the paint tube, Affandi had created gems of paintings of landscapes, animals (fighting cocks), culture (Barong and Jentayu dances) and figures, mostly of the marginalised and the downtrodden. A TIME magazine article on Jan 12, 1953 wrote: “He will often spend a week studying a subject, but the actual painting seldom takes longer than 90 furious minutes.” He painted sitting or squatting. The critic Herbert Read hailed Affandi as a painter “who had succeeded in developing a new course of expressionism.” Affandi is one of the most iconic of Indonesia’s artists whose career was embedded with the socio-political history with affiliations to several important groups like Bandung 5 (1935), People’s Painters (1947), Indonesian Painters Association (1948), and Persagi (Persatuan Ahli Gambar Indonesia). He represented Indonesia in major biennials in Brazil (1952 and 1956) and Venice (1954) where he won a prize, and Sydney (1973), and spent two years in India (1949-1950), and toured Europe in 1951-1954 and the United States, for four months, in 1957. In 1969, he was awarded the gold medal art award, and in August 1978 the Bintang Jasa Utama from the Indonesian president, and his highest accolade was the Peace Award by the Dag Hammarskjoeld Foundation in 1977. In October-November 2020, the National Gallery of Indonesia in Jakarta, organised a major Affandi exhibition, Alam, Ruang, Manusia (Nature, Space, Human), which echoed his 1987 Retrospective. His house in Yogyakarta on the Gajah Wong River is also his Museum. He is also known for his sculptures, in clay and cement.