{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":14627,"auction_id":14,"set_id":26,"lot_number":"34","artist":"Arturo Luz (1926 - 2021)","title":"Duetto (Duet)","starting_price":7000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1955 (verso)","medium":"oil-enamel on wood","size":"26\" x 20\" (66 cm x 51 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private Collection, Ohio, USA","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"“His sense of form is alive and distinguished: he knows abstraction and austerity, the sense of space and balance, he distorts with intuitional rightness and grace — in other words, he is a real artist.”
— JOSÉ GARCIA VILLA, National Artist for Literature, writing in 1952 on Luz’ prizewinning work at the 5th AAP Exhibition
As a result of winning ‘best in show’ for the modern category for “Bagong Taon” at the 5th Art Association of the Philippines’ annual exhibition of 1952, Arturo Rogerio Luz would be catapulted into the public eye.
Among his many admirers would be the internationally renowned poet, José Garcia Villa, writing from New York, to heap him with praises. (Garcia Villa would be named one of the two first National Artists for Literature in 1973; Arturo Luz, for the Visual Arts, in 1997.)
Luz would make it to the cover of the widely circulated Sunday Mirror Magazine which would feature him at work (Included in the inside pages was fellow artist Larry Alcala, also of the same age of 24, who would also be declared National Artist much later in 2018.) At the time, the article reported, Luz’ process involved making several preliminary sketches, even finding inspiration in various photographs. It would reportedly take him a week to turn out a single painting.
In 1955, the date of this painting, Luz would once more take the top prize at the AAP competition, with “Procession” giving his followers assurance that his previous win was not a fluke. Indeed, “Duetto” has all the most recognizable aspects for which Luz would become rightly famous : the elegant and spare geometry of the figures; the angularity that nevertheless made them brisk and alive; and through it all that element that can never be named but only described, giving it a sense of magic.
Luz had developed a visual language all his own, both childlike and playful as it recalled the stick figures that a tot would first draw; but also wittily sophisticated. He would single out a cast of characters — musicians, clowns, cyclists, revelers — that one could easily identify as well as identify with, in all their moments of revealing interaction.
In “Duetto”, a pair of dueling flute-players appear to be outdoing each other. One can almost hear the fervor with which they play in the alternating harmonies. A field of raucously marked lines and Luz’ signature star patterns appear to fill the air with musical notes.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Arturo Luz (1926 - 2021) Duetto (Duet) signed and dated 1955 (verso) oil-enamel on wood 26\" x 20\" (66 cm x 51 cm)