Born in Cirebon, West Java, as the son of R. Koesoema, who was a surveyor at a local sugar factory, Affandi finished his upper secondary school in Jakarta.

[citation needed] Like most of his Indonesian contemporaries, Affandi grew up largely cut off from the mainstream of modern art.

It wasn't until the late 1930s that the first exhibitions of major Western artists – from Gauguin to Kandinsky and Picasso – were held in Batavia (today's Jakarta).

With his wife's consent, he decided to devote the first ten days of each month to his trade, and the remaining twenty to his art.

He felt a kinship with the Impressionists, with Goya and with Edvard Munch, as well as the earlier masters, Breughel, Hieronymus Bosch and Botticelli.

In Yogjakarta one day, just after the Pacific War, Affandi sat painting a market place where folk were grubbing about, half-starved and half-naked.

Infuriated at his seeming unconcern, a youth threw dust at the artist and his canvas, shouting: "This man is mad!

I paint suffering – an old woman, a beggar, a black mountain ... My great wish is that people learn a little from my work.

One day, in India, visiting a village with my Daughter Kartika, I saw a dead body covered by a mattress.

He has shown also at the São Paulo Biennale and travelled through Asia, and was planning for a trip around the world, to do a series of paintings for an art collector in Japan.

Besides India, he also displayed his works in the biennale in Brazil (1952), Venice (1954), and won an award there, and São Paulo (1956).

In 1974, he received an honorary doctorate from University of Singapore, the Peace Award from the Dag Hammarskjoeld Foundation in 1977, and the title of Grand Maestro in Florence, Italy.

Additional support is provided by the tree trunks richly carved by the famous Balinese sculptor, Nyoman Tjokot.

One of his more memorable paintings shows him nude, holding a newborn grandchild, under a blue sky filled with stars.