Bali Java by Java China Japan Lijn N V (1 results)
Published by De Unie and Java-China Japan Lijn N.V., Netherlands Indies 1938
- Softcover
- First Edition
Seller: Ground Zero Books, Ltd., Silver Spring, U.S.A.Ground Zero Books, Ltd.
Contact seller5-star sellerString bound, card wraps. Condition: Fair. The format is approximately 9.5 inches by 10.5 inches. With a color printed image on the front cover by Gerard Pieter Adolfs to the front cover. Back cover map has some color. Unpaginated (48 pages plus covers, with 23 drawings of scenes typical to the East Indies printed recto only and… with a short descriptive caption facing). The drawings were produced in pen and ink and many are of Bali, its culture and temples. A book produced by the Java-China-Japan Line ("JCJL") for promotional and advertising purposes. The artist, Gerard Adolfs (1897-1968) was called by the press "The Wizard of Light". Cover has wear, soiling and is missing a small piece at the lower Front right corner and top left rear corner. The Java-China-Japan Lijn,was one of the largest Dutch shipping companies during the interwar period, which transported cargo and passengers between the Netherlands East Indies, China, and Japan. Due to its position within the Asian shipping market, the company was forced to address customer demands while simultaneously attempting to maintain imperial authority in its business dealings across the region. Contending with an increasingly cosmopolitan and politicized clientele who at times used the company to question the treatment of Chinese residents in the Netherlands East Indies and critique Dutch interference in East and Southeast Asia the company was conflicted about how to manage various ethnic groups onboard. The company was forced to negotiate with a complex set of Chinese actors, who forced the company to make concessions at odds with their imperial position. Gerard Pieter Adolfs (born 2 January 1897 in Semarang, Central-Java; died 1 February 1968 in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands) was a Dutch East Indies painter and architect. In the 1930s at the height of his artistic career the press called G.P. Adolfs the "Wizard of Light". Adolfs spent his youth in Java and received at home his first artistic inspirations. His father, Gerardus Cornelis Adolfs, was an architect and a versatile amateur (painter, photographer, piano and violin player as well as a pole vaulter). Adolfs studied architecture in Amsterdam. After graduating, he was drawn back to Java, where he designed houses in Yogyakarta, Surakarta and Surabaya. But soon he swapped the drawing pen for the dry-point, pencil and brush and from then on dedicated his whole life to painting. He was already well known as a talented advertising illustrator, when in 1924 he was first introduced to the public of Yogyakarta as a painter, water-colorist and graphic artist. Each year Adolfs traveled for a few months. He had studios in Florence, Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and - together with his Japanese friend Léonard Tsuguharu Fujita - in Paris and exhibited his works of art internationally (Netherlands Indies, Japan, Singapore, United States, England, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, France, Switzerland.) The main subjects of his work were scenes of Java, Bali, Japan and of North Africa (market sceneries, cock-fights, landscapes and townscapes). In 1940 shortly before the occupation of the Netherlands Adolfs came back to Europe and settled in Amsterdam. On 22 February 1944, during an exhibition at the Kunstzaal Pollmann, the largest part of Adolfs' paintings was destroyed by the bombardment of Nijmegen. Adolfs kept on working. He wrote and illustrated a book about his memories of Surabaya and exhibited in many well-known galleries. He lived mostly in Amsterdam - interrupted by longer stays in Scandinavia, France, Spain, Italy and North Africa. In 1967 he retired to a small village in South-Holland. On 1 February 1968, G.P. Adolfs died in 's-Hertogenbosch, North Brabant. Amongst those who have brought drawings and paintings from the Dutch East Indies, G.P. Adolfs stands out on account of the striking frankness of his style. These are not the aperçus of a typical Dutch painter seeking to achieve atmosphere and tone at all costs; but neither is there any forced exoticism in the style. He knows how to inform us directly and spontaneously of the atmosphere of a particular location both in his paintings and in his sketches and water-colours. He tells us about the special mixture of the intimate and the fantastic in an old quarter of Surabaya and about the phantasmagorical might of a tall temple gate topped with a monstrous idol; he tells us about the epic quality of the lakes with proa boats sailing on them; and about the graceful indolence of local people leaning against broken walls. He has the unpretentiousness of true inspiration, and some of his compositions the one with the temple gates and the one with the well convey a strong and strange enchantment to the observer. Presumed First Edition, Presumed First Printing. Ger. P. Adolfs [Gerard Pieter Adolfs] (illustrator).