Cawan and Sadri hairdressing

The models for this composition were the Balinese Legong dancers, Cawan and Sadri, cousins who trained together from the age of five.

The artist wrote of the dancers, 'because of their training and performances take up so much time and because the arranging of the performances and the transports to other villages are difficult if they are separated, Sadri was adopted by Cawan's father. They live together and can hardly ever be seen without each other'.

Of this sculpture Fleischmann notes, 'This terracotta shows a very typical attitude of the Balinese girls who, sitting on the steps of their Kampung entrances, are doing each others coiffures after having hunted through one another's head'.

Fleischmann created a number of small plaster, wax and terracotta maquettes depicting the Balinese dancers Cawan and Sadri. A bronze sculpture, cast in 1939, 'Hairdressing in Bali' is in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery, and depicts the dancers in the same intimate composition.