{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":102,"auction_id":1,"set_id":1,"lot_number":"66","artist":"Florencio B. Concepcion (1933 - 2006)","title":"House of God","starting_price":220000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1957 (lower left)","medium":"oil on wood","size":"26” x 18” (66 cm x 46 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Philippine Art Gallery","exhibited":"Philippine Art Gallery, June 21 - 30, 1958","literature":null,"write_up":"An early work by Florencio B. Concepcion, House of God was made by the now-celebrated and revered abstractionist when he was 24 years old. Just five years prior, in 1953, Concepcion earned his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of the Philippines.<br /><br /> House of God captures Concepcion at the nascent stage of his artistic career, showing his affinity for modernism despite him being a graduate of the UP School of Fine Arts, considered the bastion of conservative art in the first half of the 20th century. The important sticker at the back of the painting notes that this work was exhibited at the storied Philippine Art Gallery from June 21 to 30, 1958. Being the country’s first art gallery solely dedicated to the cause of modern art, Concepcion saw the PAG as a springboard for eventual success; he even held his debut solo exhibition at the famed gallery in 1957, the year the work at hand was made.<br /><br /> In a 1957 issue of This Week Magazine, Concepcion is described as a “young artist [who] is skilled in the use of both [oil and screen].” “He has won a number of art prizes both in and out of school, the latest being at the recently concluded Southeast Asia Art Competition sponsored by the Art Association of the Philippines,” the magazine continues.<br /><br />The work at hand sees Concepcion reprising one of his major works from his watershed show at the PAG, the oil painting titled San Sebastian, which was properly documented and featured in the aforementioned issue of This Week.<br /><br /> The iconic San Sebastian Church, formally known as the Minor Basilica of San Sebastian, in the historic district of Quiapo, Manila. Built in 1891, the basilica is renowned for its Gothic Revival architectural style and its distinction as the first and only all-steel church in Asia (It is also just the second all-steel structure in the world after the Eiffel Tower, which was completed just two years prior.).<br /><br /> Managed by the Augustinian Recollects, who first arrived on Philippine shores in May 1606, the San Sebastian is home to the venerated Marian image of the Our Lady of Mount Carmel, donated by Mexican Carmelite Sisters in 1617. The current all-steel structure was proposed in 1881 as a response to the disastrous earthquakes that ravaged the previous church structures. (There have been four iterations of San Sebastian. The first one, built in 1621 from nipa and bamboo, was destroyed by fire, while the third and fourth iterations were razed in the cataclysmic earthquakes of 1863 and 1880.). It was completed in 1891 and consecrated on August 15 of that same year, the feast of the Assumption. It was declared a basilica by Pope Leo XIII on June 24, 1890, one year before its completion.<br /><br />Being the sanctuary of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the San Sebastian is the site of the traditional Dungaw (“to view”), part of the annual Traslación of the Black Nazarene, in which the miraculous image of the suffering Christ stops briefly at Plaza del Carmen at the southwestern side of the basilica and “meets’’ with the image of the Our Lady, which is placed on an andas and then lifted by priests. This symbolic display of tradition and faith is a reenactment of the Fourth Station of the Cross: Christ, while carrying the Cross en route to Golgotha, meets His Mother.<br /><br />In this important early work, Concepcion captures the basilica’s magnificent steel façade, with its landmark Neo-Gothic openwork towers seemingly soaring to the heavens and suggesting its domination over the Downtown Manila skyline of the immediate post-war years. Traces of Concepcion’s trademark language of abstraction are almost absent in this work. However, one can notice the delicate and sublime swathes of yellows, whites, and greens prominent in Concepcion’s depiction of the heavens. An allusion to the divine, it can also be a likely foreshadowing of Concepcion’s ethereal and soothing language of abstract expressionism, a style he would foster and with which he would hone the talents of succeeding generations of abstractionists, including Augusto Albor and Lao Lianben. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":800000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":800000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":961280,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":69,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/1/1/lot/66.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":65,"next":67,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}