Her mother, Rogayah struggled to raise and educate her children in the difficult time during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies.

Since 1997, she lived in her dream home at the Tamansari Road just in front of the Design Institute in Bandung, where she received her close friends and family.

[12] The book Image and Abstraction that accompanied the first mayor exhibition of Umi Dachlan in 2000, showed a photo about the group of all 5 women painter during their trip to the Mills College Museum in Auckland, California in the 1990s.

Helena Spanjaard describes her early work as abstract, lyrical compositions that are inspired by landscapes and a strong relation to her activities in textile design and collages.

Since establishment of the Republic of Indonesia after World War II, these two institutions reflected two poles of a discussions called "East versus West".

In 1969 one of her first exhibitions abroad brought her, and several fellow painters, to New York as part of the delegation of the First Lady Siti Hartinah, the wife of President Suharto, for the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the United Nations.

Major artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Frank Stella or Robert Motherwell were at their prime, well known internationally.

In 1970, Umi joined her teacher Ahmad Sadali as a staff member of the design team for the Indonesian Pavilion at the Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan.

[5] Her alma mater, the ITB, was almost so often criticized as too Westernized as it was led by the Dutch painter Ries Mulder since the end of World War II and the proclamation of the Indonesian Republic.

In 1954, an exhibition of 11 students of Ries Mulder at the ITB had started the debate, when the painter and art critic Trisno Sumardjo labeled their works as "bloodless, formal, self-centered and out of reality with the situation in the country".

Yet, Trisno overlooked in his criticism that especially the abstract-expressionist paintings of A.D. Pirous, Ahmad Sadali and later Umi Dachlan used many and strong Indonesian elements, such as historic geometrical forms, Balinese-Chinese coins and religious symbols.

They released a serigraph of screenprints to popularise their works and styles, which were shown at the Taman Izmail Marzuki Exhibition Hall in Jakarta.

Especially in her landscape paintings, she uses a color palette and the space very similar to another leading Muslim woman artist, the Lebanese writer and abstract painter Etel Adnan.

Like Umi Dachlan, Etel Adnan created paintings and tapestries showing landscapes,[16] that receive a growing worldwide recognition since the early 21st Century.

[5] In addition to her studies abroad, her mid-career work was strongly influenced by her senior fellow teachers Ahmad Sadali and A.D. Pirous.

[20] Similar to the Australian painter Kudditji Kngwarreye, who is also compared to Rothko by foreign visitors[21] Umi was probably unaware of this comparison, seeking her own, independent abstract imaginations.

In 2000, the art critic and artist, Mamannoor wrote a book that accompanied a large Solo exhibition by Umi Dachlan in the Andi Galeri in Jakarta.

Her colleague A.D. Pirous described the style of Umi Dachlan's paintings as a tendency to express an abstract-contemplative visual language in a painting:"She can be very engrossed and carried into the fields of color, into shapes and lines that can take us to a visible world that is familiar with a sense of contemplation, a sense of solemnity, whether cheerful, sad or contemplative.

[22] Numerous National Galleries worldwide own or displayed her works, including in Australia, Indonesia,[23] Jordan, Singapore[24] and The Netherlands.