Ang Kiukok first visited the United States in 1965, saving enough money to go abroad with his mentor, Vicente Manansala, and the latter's wife, Hilda. Ang stayed in the L.A. house of Manansala's brother, who was employed in the Philippine consulate.
\nFor Ang, going to America was a dream come true. It was his first time abroad, and it was his earnest wish to see the iconic works of the legendary Western masters housed in the nation's most venerated museums and galleries. He and Manansala visited the Los Angeles County Museum, \"where Kiukok was moved by the stark, torn pieces of heads and hands in the works of Rico Lebrun,\" narrates Roces in his book on Ang.
\nAng also visited New York's renowned MoMA, where he \"drank in the full impact,\" as Roces puts it, \"of Picasso's famous Guernica on display at the time at the [MoMA].\" He would then reveal in a 1983 interview with Cid Reyes that Picasso was among the Western painters he admired.
\nBut America was not always the land of milk and honey; Ang Kiukok became very much disenchanted with the \"American dream.\"
\nAng himself shared in the Roces book: \"Not only was I influenced by the painting I saw in the US, but I was even more affected by the people there. I was so disappointed in the United States. The people are like robots, without humanity. It's different there. They live in a neighborhood for forty years, and they don't even know who their neighbor is. Often, they read in the papers that he had already died, and they don't know about it.\"
\n\"…You go to a coffee shop, and if you are not quick with your order, the waiter goes away…Time for them is…very what-do-you-call-it… they have lost their humanity. You seem them at the subway, all dressed up, gulping down food while on the move. Rush. Rush,\" Kiukok expressed in disappointment.
\nAmerica shook up Ang Kiukok to his very core. He realized that painting was not all technique. Away from his Filipino Modernist inclinations, Ang discovered that expressive eloquence that seemingly breaks free from the confines of the canvas is as important.
\nBefore his American sojourn, Ang was already known among art circles as a modernist following in the footsteps of his maestro Manansala. He painted the themes that made his mentor famous: the barong-barong, Christ, fish, and still life. Ang also attempted to evoke Arturo Luz's style of stark, linear elements.
\nBut in the mid-1960s, Ang had undoubtedly arrived. On the one hand was his sheer disappointment in the American life; on the other was an artist who had a profound reawakening.
\nBack in the Philippines, Ang stopped painting for a while. \"I didn't know what direction to take,\" he said. Until he decided to paint his dispiriting experiences in the US.
\nAng would showcase his newfound expressionist style in a July 1966 solo exhibition at The Luz Gallery. Among the pieces exhibited was this work at hand. Titled Android (the companion pieces in the exhibition were, unsurprisingly, also titled Android), the work depicts a robotized human with a dull aura, a once-dynamic vessel completely emptied of its life. The figure possesses a steel-cold face, with its body parts nailed onto each other, evoking machinery. It was as if Ang had foretold the dark side of humanity's future: slaves of machinery and technology, running against time to laboriously make a living under a system that only profits a few.
\nPicasso's Guernica, one of Ang's greatest inspirations, shows the destruction of war. In Ang's expressionist canvas, man's story is that of degeneration, succumbing to a life devoid of actual living and breathing and resulting in his alienation from his own nature.
\nAng's 1966 Luz Gallery exhibition had lackluster sales. \"He got nice notices…but hardly any sales,\" wrote Roces. \"His old patrons looked for and missed the old, muted, familiar Kiukok genre.\" There were even fierce reactions from critics, collectors, and casual viewers, with some saying that Ang's works are too morbid and harsh. Having failed to sell his new style, Ang was forced to do portraiture in the late 60s up to the early 70s, which became more financially rewarding but a very constricting practice for an artist.
\nAng kept all the unpurchased paintings, including the work at hand, for almost three decades until it was acquired from him by the present owner in the 1990s. Ang shared in the Cid Reyes interview that he stores all his unsold paintings. “Mabagal mabili,” he said.
\nThe coming of Android in this auction brings us back full circle to that Luz Gallery exhibition, reminding us of the time when Ang Kiukok finally came of age.
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