Remembering Ketut Madra

Known around the world as a painter of Balinese legends and folktales, Ketut Madra (1940-2021) was also a story teller, masked dancer at religious festivals, rebab player in gamelan orchestras, and creator of one of Ubud’s earliest home-stays. He is best remembered near his home in Banjar Kalah, Peliatan, as a gentle, humorous, caring, and diligent father, brother, husband, and neighbor.

Ketut Madra
Ketut Madra at the 2013 opening of Ubud’s Museum Puri Lukisan exhibition “Ketut Madra and 100 Years of Balinese Wayang Painting”
(Photo: Anggara Mahendra)

This web site recalls highlights of his life and work and includes photos of his paintings in collections in Europe and the United States as well as the Gallery at the Madra Homestay, which also features work by his son, I Madé Berata, who teaches wayang painting at the Institute for the Arts in Denpasar.

The cover of the catalog for the 2013 Museum Puri Lukisan exhibition, shows a detail of Ketut Madra’s 1973 acrylic painting of the young Hanoman’s encounter with Surya, god of the sun.

At the top of this page in a detail from another Madra painting, the Demon King Rawana, abductor of Dewi Sita, challenges his own brother Wibisana; Rama, husband of Sita; and Laksmana, Rama’s brother (left to ight), to the final battle in their long campaign to rescue Sita.