Indonesia's First President Sukarno Collection Of Paintings

Most of the Chinese readers might be quite familiar with his name-Ir.Soekarno. He was the first President of the Indonesian Republic who led his people into their independence. But few would know, that aside of his political career, he was also a talented architect and art connoisseur. During his reign, Soekarno actively supported artists and architects to participate in the country's revolution by designing and developing the city's landscape, by constructing prominent buildings such as hotels, bridges and Monumental sculptures. In addition, Soekarno's painting collections is also regarded as one of the most important documents to understanding Indonesia's modern art history. Let alone his political issues, we are trying to make a systematic analysis of Soekarno's painting collections.Soekarno had made enormous efforts to support the art and to influence the people around him to appreciate art in both pre and post Indonesia's declaration of independence. He was also known to have encouraged some of his friends to open art studios and art galleries to stimulate the art atmosphere and to promote Indonesian art to both national and international scenes.In Brief, Soekarno's collection is divided into two categories - his private collection and Indonesia's national collection. It is obvious that Soekarno was more than an art collector - he had a higher intention to build the country character thorough art. He intended to build his painting collections for the Indonesian art collection. To be appreciated by all the Indonesian people in the future. Even until the present time, Istana Merdeka's prominent painting collections was inherited from Soekarno's collection.This paper uses several approaches; classification method, comparative analysis, statistics, case studies and using the six catalogues of Soekarno painting collections published by Beijing People's fine arts publishing house as the base of analysis.And by understanding his family, cultural, education and societal background we aim to discover the underlying themes that drives his preference in certain art style and to interpret his motives and influence on the Indonesian people and art collection in general.