{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":57479,"auction_id":116,"set_id":150,"lot_number":"57","artist":"Arturo Luz (1926 - 2021)","title":"Sun and Sea","starting_price":5000000,"signed_dated":"signed (upper left)
dated 1962","medium":"enamel on canvas","size":"21 1/2\" x 33 1/2\" (55 cm x 85 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"The Luz Gallery
Acquired directly from the artist","exhibited":"The Luz Gallery, Arturo Luz and Cenon Rivera (Two-Man Exhibition), Manila, 20 July - 10 August 1962","literature":"Benesa, Leonidas V. \"The New Paintings of Arturo Luz.\" Philippines Herald Newspaper (4 August 1962). Black-and-white illustration on page 24.","write_up":"Arturo Luz's Sun and Sea formed part of a joint exhibition by Luz and Cenon Rivera, held at the then-two-year-old Luz Gallery from July to August 1962. The show was a farewell exhibition by the two artists, who were recipients of a one-year scholarship grant from the Italian government. The Luz-Rivera show was the first project sponsored by the then-newly organized Philippine–Italian Association, whose aims included the promotion and implementation of the cultural projects of the Italian Embassy in the Philippines.
Luz's Italian grant entitled him to a full year in Rome to pursue graduate studies in painting and the graphic arts. Before proceeding to Italy, Luz had to go first to the United States in mid-August 1962 on a four-month observation tour of American museums and galleries, sponsored by the US State Department's Educational and Cultural Exchange Program.
In the US, Luz observed recent developments in American art, intending to study exhibition techniques and effective gallery management from prominent American gallerists, and, in turn, applying them to the Philippines, especially for his own Luz Gallery, which by then had already succeeded the Philippine Art Gallery (PAG) as the country's sole professional gallery. Luz also visited the studios and workshops of leading American painters and printmakers.
By the time Luz and Rivera were awarded their grants, two other Filipino artists were already in their third year of studies in Rome: Leon Pacunayen and Leonardo Hidalgo, whose grants were extended due to their excellent standings at the Accademia di Belle Arti. Another artist, Florencio B. Concepcion, had already spent one year in the city.
For the exhibition, Luz was approached by the Philippine–Italian Association for a joint exhibit celebrating his and Rivera's study grants. The Association reportedly requested Luz to produce more than a dozen paintings and drawings in twenty days, to which a startled Luz initially hesitated. Nati Valentin, Luz's then fiancée, reported on her \"All about art\" column in The Manila Times dated 20 July 1962:
\"This is what Arturo Luz exclaimed when approached by the Philippine-Italian Association for a joint exhibit: 'What? Paint an exhibition in twenty days? Impossible! A single painting takes weeks!' But that is exactly what Luz has done. He has painted 20 paintings in as many days and finished some 30 new drawings! How did he disprove his own words? By momentum. Luz has been drawing like mad for the past three months...His one-painting-per-day feat proves that art is also largely discipline.”
In Sun and Sea, Luz portrays a panoramic view of a seascape. At first glance, one might think of the scenery as nighttime, evident in Luz's use of black enamel paint.
The sun's rays are rendered eccentrically, outlined in stark lines that are both playful and rigid. The sea waves are injected on the canvas in agitated flicks of bronze enamel similar to Jackson Pollock's drip paintings and Fernando Zóbel's Saetas. Colors are a full-on contrast with the subject matter. Luz instead uses a black and bronze color palette, with his lines acting as the principal actor in the painting (color merely becomes a backup). The result is a frenzy of motion, suggesting a bustling seascape teeming with marine escapades and coastal excursions. Luz also alludes to the Japanese concept of shibui, centering on the subtle and the silent.
Luz once said in his 1956 book of drawings that his figures of acrobats, musicians, and carnival forms are an \"attempt to communicate in graphic terms the color, sound, and gaiety of celebration.\" The same can be said in Sun and Sea, in which linear energies and configurations speak more than the color itself—a mischievous coldness bordering on dry-wit humor and a graphic orderliness that is Luz's trademark.
An article from the 30 July 1962 issue of The Manila Times tackling the said joint exhibition of Luz and Rivera particularly wrote on the former's works, noting: \"Paradoxically, the principal theme of the new Luz drawings and paintings is celebration and gaiety, an effect achieved through drawing and composition, rather than the use of brilliant coloring. Effects are created through lightness of handling rather than the heavy-handed use of contrasts and intensities.\" (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":6000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":6000000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":7209600,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":61972,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/116/150/lot/57.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":56,"next":58,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}