{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":57491,"auction_id":116,"set_id":150,"lot_number":"66","artist":"Arturo Luz (1926 - 2021)","title":"Homage to Fernando Zóbel","starting_price":1500000,"signed_dated":"signed (bottom)<br>\ndated 1979 - 1980","medium":"steel","size":"34\" x 81\" x 42\" (86 cm x 206 cm x 107 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private collection, Manila<br>\nLeón Gallery, The Asian Cultural Council Auction 2023,<br>\nMakati City, 18 February 2023, Lot 99","exhibited":null,"literature":"Reyes, Cid. Arturo Luz. Makati City: Ayala Foundation and The Crucible\nfor Globe Telecom, 1999. Full-color illustration and description on\npage 174.","write_up":"In the late 1960s, Arturo Luz’s art took a sudden 360-degree turn. The circus performers, carnival forms, urban landscapes, and still lifes that had dominated Luz's canvases since the beginning of his art career were abandoned in a flash; not even vestiges of them can be discerned in Luz’s art in the years to come. Luz says of this decision: \"Through the twenty years or so that I have been painting, it has always been at the back of my mind to work in a completely non-figurative, nonobjective style.\"<br><br> In Cid Reyes' book on the artist, Luz reveals the catalyst for his decision to abandon figuration and explore sculpture. \"I suddenly realized: Why do I insist on using a subject when my work was progressively becoming more and more linear and more and more abstract?... The important elements were line, composition, relationships. The second thing that occurred to me was: Why not do sculpture?... I knew I was good with my hands. I had a feeling for form, and I decided that my sculpture was going to be abstract. It was a natural move.\"<br><br> Like his paintings, Luz's sculptures were first constructed from numerous studies and small-scale models. His sculptures, especially his monumental ones, were freestanding forms influenced by the Zen nature of spontaneity and intuition. Indeed, Japanese aesthetics left a lasting mark on Luz's three-dimensional works, mainly seen in Homage to Fernando Zóbel and Homage to Gerardo Rueda.<br><br> Cid Reyes writes: \"Another Japanese-derived inspiration of Luz was origami, the art of folding to create sculptural figures... Expectedly, Luz's treatment of origami was totally abstract, never even hinting vestigially at any form of reality. Folded into flat planes in irregular but rhythmic intervals, Luz composed felicitous configurations of striking simplicity.<br><br> Reyes continues, \"One piece entitled Homage to Fernando Zóbel alludes to Zóbel's penchant for working on a square canvas. As with all of Luz's sculptural works, the origami models were sent to the steel foundry executed by artisans in the prescribed material and style.\" Luz and Zóbel had been friends since the early 1950s, during their Philippine Art Gallery days. Hence, the piece is that unique moment where we witness their meeting—a dialogue between the two pioneers of non-objective art in the country as if spiritually conversing with each other. Luz also had that enduring admiration for Zóbel, deeming him \"very exceptional.\" Homage to Fernando Zóbel can also be seen as Luz taking inspiration from Zóbel’s Dialogos.<br><br> Meanwhile, Homage to Gerardo Rueda sees Luz evoking Rueda's monochromatic geometric forms that exhibit sublime austerity. Rueda was one of the founders of the Cuenca Group and the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español, alongside Gustavo Torner and Zóbel himself. These two works show the intersection of Luz, Zóbel, and Rueda, and how they all traversed the same paths as artists, each becoming a renowned stalwart of minimalist abstract art in their own right. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"SCULPTURE","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":2000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":2000000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":1725000,"hammer_price":2403200,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":61976,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/116/150/lot/66.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"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":65,"next":67,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}