After initially training as a nurse during the First World War, Emiria Sunassa traveled to Belgium and Austria to study painting. Upon her return to Indonesia she founded PERSAGI (the Association of Indonesian Painters) with Agus Djaya and Sudjojono as a response to the “colonial” hegemony of Dutch and European painting in Indonesia. In her work she represented the people left on the margins of society and unrepresented in the works, imbued with romantic aestheticism, of the colonial painters.
