{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":56588,"auction_id":110,"set_id":144,"lot_number":"162","artist":"Nena Saguil (1924 - 1994)","title":"Abstract #24","starting_price":1700000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1957 (center right and verso)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"28 1/4\" x 19 3/4\" (72 cm x 50 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private Collection, Manila","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Simplicia “Nena” Laconico Saguil (1914 - 1994) — woman, modernist artist, insider of the ‘Philippine Art Gallery Group’, and then a member of the École de Paris — may very well, through her life and work, trace the dizzying trajectory of Philippine art. <br /><br />In fact, Nena would be one of the female triumvirate of the time: Lyd Arguilla who founded the PAG, the prize-winning Anita Magsaysay-Ho and herself. At the Philippine Art Gallery, she reigned as ‘Secretary-Treasurer’ from 1952 to 1954. Lyd Arguilla carried the democratic title of ‘Member At-Large.’ <br /><br />But it was the siren call that Juan Luna and Resurreccion Hidalgo both heard that challenged her to seek other worlds. (Nena would say that as soon as she finished college, she began to save for her escape to Paris.) In 1954, she won a Walter Damrasch scholarship to study at the Ecole d’Art at the Palais de Fontainebleau; then would spend two more years in Madrid with a grant from the Institute of Spanish Culture, possibly recommended by the sympathetic fellow emigre, Fernando Zobel. She would return to France in 1956 to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, thanks to a scholarship from her teacher, Henri Bernard Goetz. She would never leave Paris again. ’ <br /><br />During that second return, according to friend and art critic Leonidas V. Benesa, “she would execute rectangular patternings under the spell of (Alfred) Mannesier”, a non-figurative artist from the new School of Paris, and her mentor. Manessier was associated with the French movement of Lyrical Abstraction (Abstraction lyrique). <br /><br />Interestingly, in an interview with Cid Reyes, Saguil would use the very similar term “Lyrical Cubism” to describe this series of her artworks. “I was doing these squares, no, not the Vasarely style — not rigid — but floating in different tones,” she would tell him. More significantly, he also appeared to be an important influence not only on her artistic but also her spiritual development. The French artist, with the zeal of the newly converted, would seek to express through art his interest in mysticism, sacred art and the expression of spiritual ecstasy, concepts that would dominate Saguil’s art more and more. ). <br /><br /> The expression of her seeking the divine are represented by this rare work.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":2800000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":2800000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":3364480,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":60373,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/162.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":60504,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/162a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[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":161,"next":163,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}