{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":56462,"auction_id":110,"set_id":144,"lot_number":"35","artist":"Hernando R. Ocampo (1911 - 1978)","title":"Miners","starting_price":4000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1952 (lower left)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"18\" x 14\" (46 cm x 36 cm)","property":"PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED LADY","coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist","exhibited":"Cultural Center of the Philippines, Edades and the 13 Moderns,\nManila, 1995","literature":"De Jesus, Angel G. H.R. Ocampo: The Artist as Filipino. Manila: Heritage Publishing, 1979. Full-color illustration on page 117 and painting description on page 119.<br /><br />\nParas-Perez, Rod. Edades and the 13 Moderns. Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same title at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines with the assistance of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 1995. Black-and-white illustration and painting description on page 70.","write_up":"An avid reader himself, Miners may have been inspired by the Paracale mine disaster of December 15, 1952, when water rapidly rushed into a 400-foot-deep tunnel in a goldmine owned by the United Paracale Mining Co. in Camarines Norte. The mine became severely flooded, trapping and drowning 55 miners, making the incident the worst mining disaster in Philippine history during that time.<br /><br />Ocampo probes into poor labor conditions with this work. He was, in fact, a nationalist. While in jail due to false collaboration charges after the war (but soon revealed to be born out of jealousy, as his friend who filed the case allegedly saw Ocampo kiss his girlfriend, which, to Ocampo's defense, was his way of greeting women friends), Ocampo bonded with other nationalists who were also unfortunately accused of being collaborators, including Claro M. Recto, Jose P. Laurel, and even Victorio Edades, his painting companion at that time. His biographer de Jesus also recounted a newspaper debate in which Ocampo “maintained that in the future, the Philippines should try to depend on herself alone and not on other countries whose motives were not always altruistic.”<br /><br />In Miners, the artist's rendering of organic, sinuous forms emphasizes the humanity of the miners, with their faceless features highlighting their dehumanization under an exploitative environment. Miners also show an attempt to synthesize the colors of the Philippine flag and transform them into somber tones to evoke the desolate conditions the Filipino people had to endure in the post-war years: living amidst an environment of national trauma, of immediate survival and sustenance amid sluggish rehabilitation and reconstruction and the hegemony of neo-colonial, pro-American policies.<br /><br />Miners is a synthesis of Western surrealism and the NeoRealist propensity of projecting an early form of Filipino social realism. Ocampo turns to the writings of Sigmund Freud on the interpretation of dreams. He colors his figurative works with a dream-like bizarreness of projecting repressed emotions and thoughts as metaphors for a new reality filled with the tension between chaos and order, death and survival, hope and despair.<br /><br />Ocampo heavily leans on the lived experiences of the times, painting a highly symbolic image through his subjective preferences of tropical colors and highly stylized forms to emphasize an objective reality—the Neo-Realist essence. <br /><br />For Ocampo to have empathized with the struggles of the common Filipino is deeply rooted in his past. If there was someone who could become the poster boy of the Filipino as a struggling artist, it was Ocampo himself. Raised in Maypajo, Caloocan, Ocampo had already faced the harsh realities of life in his youth. Eager to help his financially incapacitated family, Ocampo became a shoe-shine boy for the nearby cabarets' local and foreign customers. At 17, he became a cashier at the Maypajo cabaret. (Ocampo playfully recounted that aside from tending the cash register, he also dated some of the bailarinas (hostesses) whose daily attendance he checked.)<br /><br />During the 1930s, Ocampo was a member of the Veronicans, a group of twelve young writers that also included literary heavyweights Francisco Arcellana, N.V.M. Gonzalez, and Estrella Alfon. They were described by Leonidas Benesa in his book Hernando R. Ocampo: The Neo-Realist as Avant-Garde as \"involved in proletarian literature, or social realism, in the belief that this was the 'true image,' which should show on the veil of literature.\" Ocampo's association with the Veronicans would spill out to his early years as a painter.<br /><br />When Ocampo painted Miners, he had transferred from the print media to the radio world, as there was a boom in radio drama and the compensation was three times bigger, as he said in a 1972 interview with Cid Reyes. In radio, he was also a writer, director, producer, and an occasional actor. This he did as the eldest child, all for the hustle of providing a living for his parents, his two families from two different wives, and his nephews and nieces whose parents (his siblings) were unemployed. (Because there would be no breadwinner for the family, Ocampo shockingly declined three international study grants, foremost of which was the Parisian scholarship of 1950 that was given to Manansala instead.) <br /><br />Putting all these struggles together, one can picture Ocampo's \"Proletarian Period,\" where humanity's optimism and melancholy resonate with beautiful tension. He never left the Philippines to study and broaden his creative horizons abroad, but the collective hopes and struggles of the common Filipino proved powerful enough for his virtuosity to flourish.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":5000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":5000000,"userBid":5930,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":6008000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":60246,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/35.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":60622,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/35b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":60621,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/35c.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":60620,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/110/144/lot/35a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":34,"next":36,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}