A contemporary of S. Sudjojono and Hendra Gunawan, Affandi shared the same profound commitment against the Mooie Indies school of artists who painted romanticised scenes and people of the Dutch East Indies and which to the people's artists as they are known, are completely divorced with the reality of real Indonesia. Described as "one of the most important interpreters of people's life and emotion" (Astri Wright, Soul, Spirit, Mountain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters, Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 158), Affandi's preoccupation with the common folk started at the beginning of his career.
With his large-scale, full length portraits of Indonesian subjects from the 1960s Affandi articulates the excitement of the new republic, transforming the common man into icon, celebrating the soul of the people, whose lives have always been connected to the region's land and seas. It is interesting that the starting point of such works lies in classic Western art, in this case the full-length portraiture of old masters such as Titian and Velazquez. However the realism of these models are completely subverted by Affandi's characteristically frenzied paint scrawls, a technique he came across by accident which he found made the object in the painting more alive. By the time Affandi painted the present lot, he has developed his signature expressionistic style of deftly applied successive paints directly onto the canvas for more than 2 decades. The apparent ease he has with the technique is also evident with his manipulation of the subject. In this work, the artist paints one of his favourite subjects. Affandi consciously used the man and cockerel in paintings to express his feelings for his country and people, especially Bali and Java. The cock fighter in this 1979 painting carries all the paraphernalia of this occupation like a king with his emblems of power, or a deity with his iconographic attributes. The man holding his cockerel expresses the stillness that is maintained by the tension of the man's firm grasp of the prize bird. Yet all the details seem secondary amid the virtuosity of expressive paint marks and scribbles, which as a whole appears like a monumental, irregular mesh of lines. Despite the radical deconstruction of traditional painting, Affandi always grounds his canvases in formal reality. So even though the painting may be an overwhelming jumble of paint marks and lines, the viewer still clearly discerns the standing figure of a man proudly holding his prize fighter in his hand. But transcending form and process, the work radiates with Affandi's prime inspirations: the optimism, hope and intense joy of creating art, of documenting his life, environment and people, and of visualising the spirit of a young republic.