I Gusti Made Deblog

I Gusti Made Deblog was a Balinese painter regarded today as one of the Old Master artists of Bali. Orphaned during the Puputan Badung war of 1906, he was raised by his uncle and spent his youth working in the rice fields. In 1931, he began studying realistic black-and-white painting under Yap Sin Tin, a Taiwanese artist. By the mid-1930s, he developed his skills independently, studying works of the Pita Maha artists displayed at the Bali Museum. Deblog later gained recognition in painting competitions during both the Dutch colonial and Japanese periods, and remained active in exhibitions from the late 1950s to the 1980s.

Deblog became known for a distinctive realist-naturalistic style that combined Western realism with the narrative tradition of Balinese wayang. He transformed wayang figures by giving them more anatomically realistic proportions, enhanced with refined Chinese ink technique and careful attention to light and shading. His works often depict mythological scenes set within detailed natural landscapes, rendered with depth and perspective. This fusion of realism and traditional storytelling became associated with what scholars later described as the “Denpasar Style” in Balinese art.