{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":108,"auction_id":1,"set_id":1,"lot_number":"72","artist":"Vicente Manansala (1910 - 1981)","title":"Pieta","starting_price":6000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1970 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"22 x 29 (56 cm x 74 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM THE DON VICENTE “TIKING” H. LOPEZ, JR. COLLECTION","coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"The friendship between Don Vicente “Tiking” Lopez, Jr. and Vicente Manansala was the quintessential embodiment of the artist-collector bond.<br /><br />Curator Lisa Guerrero Nakpil notes that of Don Tiking’s collection, which ranged from art and antiques, his trove of modern art was his most prized. The León Gallery curator writes that Don Tiking would invite the famous Saturday Group of Artists, to which Manansala once belonged, “to his penthouse at the family-owned Elena Apartments in Ermita. (The building was named after his mother, the elegant Doña Elena Hofileña Lopez. Tiking was thus cousin two times over to the Eugenio Lopezes.)”<br /><br />Guerrero Nakpil also made particular mention of a sumptuous feast at Don Tiking’s, which counted among its honorable guests Manansala. She writes: “Gathered at his table would be Vicente Manansala, Hernando R. Ocampo, Sym Mendoza, Alfredo Roces, and Tiny Nuyda, to name a few. There were also musical soirees featuring the Elena String Ensemble, which included members of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra with Don Tiking on his 17th-century cello. Jose Joya was a particularly avid fan of these evenings. Don Tiking would also invite this circle to enjoy the delights of the Vallehermoso country air.”<br /><br />It was in this atmosphere of congeniality and goodwill that Don Tiking acquired several masterpieces from Manansala. Among the Manansala opuses Don Tiking acquired was this poignant interpretation of the Pieta depicting Mary sorrowfully cradling the dead body of her son, Jesus. (In June 2022, León Gallery auctioned a Manansala from Don Tiking’s collection: Madonna No. 2, also a 1970 work.)<br /><br />A deeply spiritual and devout person, Don Tiking—who actively participated in the spiritual retreats and other ministerial activities of the Cursillo Foundation of the Philippines and later became a Eucharistic minister at Ermita’s Nuestra Senora de Guia Parish—found solace in the moving image of Christ’s passion and death, a reminder of his commitment to his vocation as a servant of the Lord.<br /><br />Manansala created Pieta at a time of his sweet, overwhelming success. In the same year as this work, he was conferred the Araw ng Maynila Award. Seven years prior, in 1963, Manansala was awarded the Republic Cultural Heritage Award, the prestigious precursor to the National Artist Award. But more than this string of continuous success, Pieta shows the maturation of Manansala’s Transparent Cubism, with his smooth and graceful brush strokes showing refinement and the meticulous ability to render transparent layers of superimposed planes so as to retain their sheer realism and heightened emotional resonance and imbibe a sense of humanization.<br /><br />Manansala’s journey to Transparent Cubism was an arduous two decades in the making. Manansala first laid the foundations of his cubist language during his ninemonth Parisian sojourn of 1950-51, in which he became the first Filipino to be awarded by the French government a scholarship to the famed Ecole des Beaux-Arts of the University of Paris. There, Manansala was mentored by the French cubist Fernand Leger, a close contemporary of the pioneers of Cubism Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, two of Manansala’s foremost luminaries.<br /><br />Agnes Duval, in her article “Manansala” in the April 1968 issue of Solidarity: Current Affairs, Ideas, and the Arts magazine, writes of Manansala’s particular catalyst for the birth of his Transparent Cubism. “Window shopping one day [in Paris], he [Manansala] noted the interplay of reflected images on the plate-glass and the objects inside the window displays.” And the rest, as they always say, is history.<br /><br />Pieta also encapsulates Manansala’s Catholic faith. In his landmark book Conversations on Philippine Art, Cid Reyes says to Manansala: “Isa pa hong lagi ninyong ipinipinta e yung Kristo.” Manansala answers: “Oo. Taon-taon yan, gumagawa ako ng isang Kristo.” The artist adds that it has become a kind of devotion, a religious vow. In Rod. ParasPerez’s book Manansala, the maestro revealed: “I used to go to Mass every day at the San Francisco Church. At 14, I wanted to become a priest.” On that account, Manansala imbibes a solemn, reverential atmosphere in his paintings of the suffering Christ. In his language of Transparent Cubism, Manansala never fragmented the subject; he remained faithful to its actuality. As such, Manansala captures the invincibility and omnipotence of the Divine, even in the face of agony and death. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":0,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":0,"userBid":17,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"UNSOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":588,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":0,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":76,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/1/1/lot/72.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":71,"next":73,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}