Originally from Cirebon, Haryadi Suadi is a well-known printmaker trained at the art training institution in Bandung where he studied printmtmaking under the tutelage of Mochtar Apin from the late 1950s until mid-1960s. Unlike the earliest generation of Bandung artists, such as Apin, Ahmad Sadali, and A.D. Pirous who worked closely with Western abstraction, Haryadi's prints engaged more closely with the works of Japanese printmaker, Shiko Munakata, and local languages of representation informed by Javanese and Cirebonese cultural and material tradition. While Haryadi worked primarily with prints and glass paintings, he began to work with painting on canvas since the beginning of 1990s. Painted in 2001, "Untitled" is considered to be the largest and the most sophisticated painting on canvas that Haryadi had produced. This painting shows almost the full constellation of Haryadi's sign systems that include iconographies and writings taken from multiple origins and sources, such as Islamic talismanic system, Javanese shadow puppet, Cirebonese visual motifs, palmistry, and phrenology. It also contains traces of Haryadi's continued exploration of calligraphy on the medium of collage and xerography that he produced in the period of mid-1990s to early 2000s.
