{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":58415,"auction_id":121,"set_id":155,"lot_number":"50","artist":"Benedicto Cabrera (b. 1942)","title":"Fishing Village in Sasmuan","starting_price":1700000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1964 (lower left)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"24\" x 36 1/2\" (61 cm x 93 cm)","property":"PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED LADY","coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired in the 1960s from an A. Mabini Street gallery in Ermita, Manila","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"By the mid-1960s, Benedicto Cabrera had been providing sustenance for himself by working as an illustrator for various publications and institutions. Bencab's decision to join the workforce came after he dropped out of the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts months before he could earn his Fine Arts degree with a major in Illustration. <br /> <br />In 1963, Bencab quit college and landed a job at the revamped and modernized Liwayway Magazine, becoming an illustrator along with Ang Kiukok and Alfredo Roces. Bencab quit after three months and then became a layout artist for the United States Information Service (USIS) at the invitation of his brother Salvador \"Bading\" Cabrera, one of the key Mabini artists of the 50s and the 60s. Fortunately, Bading had a friend named Bes Nievera resigning from his position, which Bencab soon filled. Bencab's stint at the USIS was his first full-time job. <br /> <br />Bencab's time at the USIS would soon prove to be fortuitous. At that point in his life, he met Virgilio \"Pandy\" Aviado and Marciano \"Mars\" Galang, with whom he would forge an enduring friendship, strengthened by the arts. (Aviado and Galang would also be Bencab's companions in a three-man exhibition at the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) Gallery at the UNESCO Building along Herran (now Pedro Gil) Street held from August 30 to September 14, 1965.) <br /> <br />Aviado and Galang were instrumental in Bencab's transition from illustration to painting. The trio would often go, as author Krip Yuson puts it in the book BENCAB, \"on on-the-spot sketching and painting excursions around Manila, mostly by the seawall off Luneta, rendering boats and ships on paper and canvas, or at the Binondo district with its network of esteros or canals, to document the shantytowns that flanked both banks.\" <br /> <br />Bencab also travelled to the towns situated along the shores of Manila Bay, most notably the town of Sasmuan in Pampanga. His parents, Isabel Reyes and Democrito Cabrera, hailed from Sasmuan, a coastal town consisting of networks of interconnected patches of wetland surrounded by fishponds and crisscrossed by rivers and streams that are directly connected to Manila Bay, with the Rio Grande de Pampanga traversing along the municipality's southeastern portion. Particularly, the Sasmuan Pampanga Coastal Wetlands, located downstream of the Pasac-Guagua Watershed that drains into Manila Bay, were designated a \"Ramsar site\"—an internationally and critically important wetland site—in February 2021 by the \"Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat.\" <br /> <br />For centuries, the Sasmuan townsfolk have been sustained by the bounties of their waters, and they are proudly the sole municipality in Pampanga wholly dependent, economically and socially, on fishing and aquaculture. Sasmuan is a wetland dotted by mangroves and teeming with a diversity of aquatic species: tilapia, bangus, sugpo, talangka, palos, balanak, alupihang dagat, blue swimming crabs, lobsters, oysters, and mussels, to name only a few. In present times, food processing, such as crab paste production, has become a source of income for many families. <br /> <br />One of his earliest works of art, Bencab's Fishing Village in Sasmuan, was inspired by one of his visits to his hometown during the mid-1960s. Bencab's occasional travels to Sasmuan are evidenced by several paintings depicting the same subject: fishing villages brimming with stilt houses and fishponds that support and ensure the livelihood of the people. <br /> <br />This particular painting marks one of the very first instances in which Bencab signed his works in his now iconic signature \"Bencab.\" In his official chronology, the artist adopted the moniker \"Bencab\" in 1964 \"to avoid confusion with other painters named Cabrera,\" most notably his older brother, Bading. By this time, Bencab had also been acquainted with Manila's top literary bluebloods and cultural stalwarts, including art critic Leonidas Benesa, who inspired Bencab to join the AAP. In 1964, Bencab, together with his \"Kuya Bading\" and friends Edgar Soller and Bal Magallona, established Sining Gallery on Mabini Street, affiliating Bencab with the Mabini Art Movement. <br /> <br />Fishing Village in Sasmuan not only offers glimpses into Bencab's artistic beginnings but also an homage to his hometown and an act of elevating the common folk and the often-neglected members of society, who would always find themselves the protagonists of Bencab's works. It should be noted that the same year he painted this work, Bencab started observing and sketching the scavenger \"Sabel\" from his window in his Bambang home. <br /> <br />As a boy whose heritage and ancestors are rooted in a community of proud and zealous fisherfolk and who grew up in the lower middle-class district of Santa Cruz, Manila, Fishing Village in Sasmuan is a testament to Bencab being both an \"Anak Sasmuan\" (Son of Sasmuan) and \"A Son of the People.\"","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":4200000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":4200000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":5046720,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":63674,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/50.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":63894,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/50c.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":63893,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/50d.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":63891,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/50b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":63890,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/121/155/lot/50a.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":49,"next":51,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}