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The artist's 2 year stay on the island of Bali (1938-1939) is a very important chapter of his career.
Fleischmann came to Bali via Zanzibar and other islands after leaving South Africa.
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Fleischmann holding
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Balinese masks
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For Fleischmann Bali represented an escape from the growing instability in Europe.
He described the island as "a land of complete harmony between nature and the people,
their art and customs".
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Waiting to dance Legong
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Here in Bali Fleischmann's sense of spirituality found freedom to express itself and, under the
influence of a Dutch colonial missionary, Father Boyce, he converted to Catholicism.
While in Bali Fleischmann mainly created small terracotta sculptures. Some themes are more
frequent, for instance the Legong dancers. Stylistically the Balinese works - without exception
all figurative - stand apart from his other works.
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Fleischmann flourished in Bali not only as a sculptor; he worked on the manuscript of a
book "Bali through a sculptorīs eyes" that he intended to publish together with some 1800
documentary photographs, which now form an invaluable archive about the life and customs
of the Balinese in the late 1930s.
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Girl with Head Dress
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'I came to Bali as a sculptor and the Balinese have been a tremendous inspiration
in my work. But sculpting is slow work...,its nature is such that it can give only a
few crystallised symbols of life. Photographs can capture the beauty of the human figure,
especially the beauty of Balinese women.'
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Fleischmann in his studio - Bali
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In the introduction to the manuscript, Fleischmann wrote:
'To photographers I would like to say that these pictures were taken with miniature
camera (Dolina) on 35 mm film. Most of them have been enlarged with the aid of daylight
and an old wooden box camera fixed in the opening of the blacked out window.'
This is a very practical description of the methods he used, but it also gives
an idea of the modesty and simplicity of his life on Bali.
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