Collection News at the Grinnell College Museum of Art

The Grinnell College Museum of Art was recently the recipient of a donation of artwork from Ignatius Widiapradja, professor emeritus of Drake University. The gift includes a 1997 acrylic painting by Widiapradja titled The Killing Fields and seven ceramic Martaban storage jars from Burma, China, and Thailand.

Born in Indonesia of Chinese descent, Widiapradja received an MFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He served as an Associate Professor of studio art at Drake from 1985 until his retirement in 2014. Although Widiapradja initially taught jewelry design and goldsmithing, he went on to teach foundation design, painting, drawing, and digital photography.

According to Widiapradja, his painting The Killing Fields is about the atrocity of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. The pyramid stacks of skulls and bones refers to the massacre and mass grave of more than one million innocent civilians by the Khmer Rouge regime during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979. The muted coloration, dramatic lighting, and realism of the skulls in the painting’s foreground reflects Widiapradja’s early training in the style of the Dutch masters, while the background alludes to Chinese landscape painting.

Widiapradja is especially empathetic of the plight of Cambodians because he and his family lived through the 1965 coup in Indonesia when the Sukarno government fell. The coup was blamed on the Chinese, so the artist’s family was given the Indonesian name of Widiapradja by a village leader to protect them from the ensuing violent reprisals.   

In addition to his painting, Widiapradja also donated seven ceramic Martaban storage jars from Burma, China, and Thailand. The artist began collecting the jars at the age of fourteen when he requested an 18th century Chinese Martaban jar as a birthday gift. The oldest jar gifted to GCMoA dates from the 9th to 10th centuries.

Martaban jars are stoneware storage pots named after a port in Burma (modern-day Myanmar). Thai, Chinese, Burmese, and Cambodian goods were shipped from this port throughout southeast Asia. The large jars (on average about 3 feet high) were made near port towns for shipping convenience in the southern Chinese coastal provinces. The vessels were used to store water, oil, wine, and other commodities. Covered with black, brown, or amber glaze, Martaban jars are often adorned with incised decorations of dragons, clouds, pearls, or waves.

Excavations of kilns around the Bay of Martaban have provided information about how the jars were made. Using clay and sand from the riverbanks and the coast, the vessels were thrown on a potter’s wheel. After drying for a couple of days, they were beaten into the desired shape using a mallet against a mold inside the vessel. Ornamentation was added by using figured and carved mallets before being set aside to be thoroughly dried. The jars were then fired in kilns and glazed using a mixture of galena (the natural mineral form of lead sulphide) and rice water. The colors can range from black or almost black, to brown, golden brown, and olive-green. Loop handles are usually found on the shoulder of the vessels.

According to Studio Professor Robin Strangfeld, “Grinnell College Museum of Art’s permanent collection is loved by our students.  Some students even say it is why they came to Grinnell College.  Ceramics is a huge old table that hosts a multitude of conversations.  As someone who teaches ceramics it is important for me to share as many of these conversation as I can with students.  To have the Martaban jars allows students to engage with physical objects but then have discussions about surface, form, materials, firing techniques, function, and history.  While books are amazing, having the Martaban jars in our collection will bring to life an important ceramic conversation for our students.”