FRANS NADJIRA, INDONESIAN ARTIST PAR EXCELLENCE
While the rest of the world was entranced by the dilapidated decadence and unbridled passion and freedom of America’s revolutionary ‘beat’ literary movement, Indonesian Frans Nadjira was living the dream. An ‘artist’ in the true sense of the word, Nadjira gave rein to his artistic fervor at an early age. “When people meet, lives change” chimes the advertising copy-but in Nadjira’s case it wasn’t a person he met, but a magazine. It was a Dutch periodical on the arts, discarded in a trash can, which fell into the hands of a starry-eyed juvenile hipster, and like sails raised in a strong wind, gave his life perpetual direction. “It was an article about the work of Wassily Kandinsky,” Nadjira reminisces, “and it changed my life forever. It was like I had found my calling.”