Sriwati Masmundari (1904–2005), often known simply as Masmundari, was an Indonesian visual artist known for her work with a traditional kind of lantern-painting from her birthplace Gresik called damar kurung.[1][2][3][4] She became famous for it very late in life, having her first public exhibition in 1987; by the 1990s her work was featured by national magazines such as Kompas, in national art exhibitions and in the Indonesian Presidential Palace.[4] Her work, which is sometimes described as folk art or Naïve art, often depicted vibrant scenes of celebrations, families, women at work, and so on.[5]
Sriwati Masmundari was born in Telogo Pojok village, Gresik Regency, Soerabaja Residency, Dutch East Indies (now located in East Java province, Indonesia) in 1904.[2][6] She was the eldest of 3 siblings born into a family of artists.[7] She began to paint damar kurung lanterns at age 10, learning from her parents Sinom and Mak Ijah who were also lantern and wayang artists.[8][3]
She worked for decades in the art form, achieving only local recognition in Gresik. She initially used traditional methods such as painting with food dyes on wax paper; in later years she adopted commercially available and more durable materials such as permanent markers and tracing paper.[2] After creating the lanterns for decades, it was in the 1980s that a local artist from Gresik, Imang AW, convinced a gallery in Jakarta to display her work.[3] That first solo exhibition was in 1987 at the Bentara Budaya Jakarta, a gallery which would regularly display her works in the years to come.[4][3][2] In 1989 Kompas magazine featured some of her lantern paintings on the cover of their calendar.[4] She continued to create a prodigious number of lanterns during this time; making as many as 300 per year, which she continued to sell for around 50,000 rupiah; the larger and more ornate ones sold for hundreds of thousands of rupiah.[3]
She continued to create and exhibit art until the last year of her life, growing increasingly contemporary and original in the scenes she depicted.[8] She also worked on canvas in her later years, although she still continued to produce around 30 lanterns per year in the month of Ramadan.[3]
She died on 25 September 2005.
After her death her work continued to be displayed in exhibitions and in books; it appeared at the National Gallery of Indonesia in 2007 as part of an exhibit on Feminism and Indonesian contemporary art, and in a book anthology in the same year.[9][10][11]