In the mid-1950s, a new chapter in Federico Aguilar Alcuaz’s artistic career began when Fernando Zobel, the avant-garde Filipino artist, saw potential in the young Aguilar Alcuaz and recommended him for a Spanish beca. So in 1955, he followed the footsteps of Juan Luna and Fernando Amorsolo and left for Madrid where he studied at the prestigious Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando under a scholarship.
\nAt Academia de San Fernando, Aguilar Alcuaz was exposed not just to discipline, training, exposure, and the basic grammar of art – what Aguilar Alcuaz referred to as the ABCs of art – but to an ample amount of inspiration from one of the most bustling and art-infused cities in the worked. For nine years from 1955 to 1964, Spain, specifically Barcelona, became Aguilar Alcuaz’s home base where he worked and maintained a studio on the fourth floor of 285 Aragon St.
\nHe had to return to Manila in 1964 after a near-fatal accident; however, he continued to maintain his Barcelona for the next four decades. Throughout his life, he continued his travels worldwide, visiting Czechoslovakia from 1968 to the early 1980s for his tapestries. He also started his “Tres Marias” series near the end of the 1970s.
\nThese still-life pieces created around the same time as his Tres Marias series echoed Aguilar Alcuaz’s Spanish inspirations. Here, he notably departs from the influences of the prevalent Spanish Baroque and instead veers into a world with a tinge of Fauvist sensibilities. His avant-garde leanings show through strong color qualities; Fauvism as a movement only lasted less than five years but still, its style and impact continued for years to come.
\nThese works also entail the portability that Aguilar Alcuaztends to veer into especially when he does concert-painting. Portable both physically and conceptually, these works manage to compress the entirety of Alcuaz’s encompassing talent and post-war angst.
\n“Aguilar Alcuaz’s career path is definitely post WWII, inevitably touched by the continental angst of the existentialists and at the same time by the exuberance of New York’s Action Painting,” Dr. Rod Paras-Perez in Parallel Text: Federico Aguilar Alcuaz.
\n“Alcuaz paints like a fencer and is more than burdened by a sense of unrelieved angst,” he continues. “Like de Kooning and Pollock, [he] readily accepts the role of the unconscious in the painting process.” (Hannah Valiente)
","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"Federico Aguilar Alcuaz (1932 - 2011)
a.) Untitled (Composition)
signed and dated 1978 (center)
oil on canvas
6 1/4\" x 9 3/4\" (17 cm x 26 cm)
b.) Untitled (Composition)
signed and dated 1978 (lower center)
oil on canvas
5 1/2\" x 8 1/4\" (15 cm x 23 cm)
c.) Untitled (Composition, Stilllife)
signed and dated 1978 (lower center)
oil on canvas
6 1/4\" x 9 1/4\" (17 cm x 25 cm)
d.) Untitled (Composition)
signed and dated 1978 (lower right)
oil on canvas
6 1/4\" x 9 3/4\" (17 cm x 26 cm