{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":9552,"auction_id":10,"set_id":17,"lot_number":"875","artist":"Juan Arellano (1888 - 1960)","title":"Self-Portrait","starting_price":80000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1956 (lower right)","medium":"oil on masonite board","size":"24” x 18 1/2” (61 cm x 47 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"JUAN ARELLANO: Architect of Philippine Modern Art
\nJuan M. Arellano cemented his legacy as a man with an exquisite grasp of the fine arts. He was among the foremost architects of his time, the genius behind some of Manila’s most iconic edifices, such as the Manila Metropolitan Theater, the Old Legislative Building, the Manila Central Post Office, and the Rizal Memorial Baseball Stadium. But before he ventured into architecture, Arellano was initially inclined towards painting, taking special courses in drawing and painting under the creative auspices of Filipino masters Lorenzo Guerrero, Toribio Antillon, and Fabian de la Rosa.
Arellano produced around 300 works from 1911 to 1960, intermittently returning to painting even during his architectural prime in the 1930s and the 1940s. Throughout his artistic career, Arellano mostly produced landscapes imbued with a visual spectacle of spontaneous brushstrokes and eccentric fusion of colors. He traversed through various styles: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, and Symbolism. All these would boil down to a penchant for Modernist art. Arellano would even be considered by some art historians as the Philippines’ first Modernist, even before Victorio Edades emerged on the scene.
In 1956, Arellano retired as a professional architect and concentrated\non painting. It was a full-circle journey for a man whose creative flai\nfirst unfolded in that field of the visual arts. His later years were\nmarked by a firm adherence to the modernist cause, especially in\nhis treatment of portraits. This is evident in Portrait of a Man, where\nthe subject’s facial expression communicates his dreary disposition,\nemphasized clearly by Arellano’s masterful handling of the impasto\ntechnique.
Arellano also delved into an iconography characterized by a macabre\nsetting and an uncanny atmosphere. The Wake and Three Skulls\nepitomize this experimentation. The haunting atmosphere, which\nArellano uncannily weaves through a synthesis of the dynamics\nbetween light and shadow and employment of somber colors, serves\nas a poignant reminder of the transience of human existence.
At the twilight of his earthly life, death and its related themes\nbecame recurring subjects in Arellano’s works until his own passing\nin 1960. (A.M.)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Juan Arellano (1888 - 1960) Self-Portrait signed and dated 1956 (lower right) oil on masonite board 24” x 18 1/2” (61 cm x 47 cm)