For Pirous, “An artist should be sensitive to his past cultural dynamism (…) to stand more firmly in his own land to contribute to the development of world culture.” His contemplations on identity and nationalist sentiment led Pirous to explore the boundaries of an “Indonesian” aesthetic by infusing elements like the Jawi script and the tilam pandak from his native Aceh into his work to express a local variation of the Islamic faith and “awaken Indonesian Muslims to their common cultural heritage.”
Pirous joined Sanggar Seniman (The Artist’s Studio) in 1958 and subsequently organised its first open-air exhibition in 1960 alongside his contemporaries Srihadi Sudarsono and But Mochtar. After finishing his studies at the Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), he was appointed as permanent teaching staff in 1964. In 1969, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a fellowship to study printmaking at the Rochester Institute of Technology; Pirous' subsequent exposure to the Islamic art collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art reinvigorated his interest in Islamic aesthetics and prompted a stylistic metamorphosis in his works.