Temple topography is one of Arie Smit’s favourite subjects apart from villages, rice terrace and palm trees, rendered in his trademark shimmering and contrasting colours and a matrix of lines and dots. “I arrange temple courts as one arranges flowers in a vase,” Smit wrote in Poetic Realism, The Art of Arie Smit (Neka Museum, 1990). “My art is realism, but I avoid the harshness of actuality, the explicit, the edge, details, shape…” The composition starts from the candi bentar (the split gates) of Hindu temples which abound in Bali. Two feminine forms balancing bundles on their heads wend their way to the broad path in the foreground, while the surrounding grassy paths and higher elevation provide the backdrop with lollipop trees like banners. “I strive for a poetic realism, a dream-like state of mind, a soft confrontation.” Arie Smit is best known, influential in developing the art of the Young Artists of Penestanan. Born in Zaandam, The Netherlands, he became a lithographer for the Dutch East Indies Army in Batavia and also taught Art in Bandung. He became an Indonesian citizen (in late 1951) after being captured by the invading Japanese and surviving the Death Railway labour camp in River Kwai in Thailand earlier. Smit died in Denpasar, Bali, in 2016, three weeks short of his 100th birthday. His highest accolade was when he was awarded the Dharma Kusama (Flower of Devotion Balinese Cultural Award) in 1992.