Widayat brought the rubric of ordinary Javanese life centre-stage, often in busy marketplaces where the common folks congregated in commerce, leisure or at play. Typical of the busy over-crowded scene, he had people, male and female, in pants or sarong, standing, walking and squatting. There is a relaxed, casual atmosphere in the makeshift open-air marketplace dotted with 40 figures, including a baby strapped in a shoulder cloth. The composition couched in tawny brown veneer for a dirt economic status of the Magical Decorative shows that life goes on, with vendors selling goods in large baskets or barrels or carrying their wares on their heads. Not all are food hawkers, there is one selling cheap rolled carpets, too. The clothing is not ostentatious, with only the headgear, songkok and even a hat the only body accessories. Otherwise, a makeshift canopy or thatched roofing or leafy trees provide respite from the sun. It's not difficult to see why Widayat had perceptive insights into the lives of common Indonesians. As a surveyor cum map-maler, he moved around a lot, before he opted for a career as an artist. He was a late-starter, graduating from the Indonesian Academy of Fine Arts (Asri) in Yogyakarta in 1949, at the age of 31! And then, he lectured in his alma mater for more than 30 years. He was versatile, dabbling also in ceramics and sculptures. He was one of the few Indonesian artists given a retrospective by the Singapore Art Museum, in the Widayat Between Worlds exhibition, in 2007. Widayat's works have seen incremental value, with a HK$1,250,000 (RM672,373) premium at the Sotheby's HK Oct 2021 auction, for Terang Bulan Di Rimba.