{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":61702,"auction_id":209,"set_id":242,"lot_number":"126","artist":"Cesar Legaspi (1917 - 1994)","title":"Untitled","starting_price":1200000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1986 (lower right)","medium":"mixed media","size":"38” x 28” (97 cm x 71 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM THE DR. ED FORES COLLECTION","coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by the heirs of the artist confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"National Artist Cesar Legaspi stands as one of the foremost champions of modern art in the Philippines, credited with redefining cubism into a distinctly Filipino language. His signature style of geometric fragmentation softened the rigidity of angular forms, merging them into rhythmic, interlocking shapes that pulsed with life. As a member of both the Thirteen Moderns and the Neo-Realists, Legaspi carved out a place in art history not only for his technical mastery but also for his unflinching social vision.
A master colorist despite his deuteranopia—with reds perceived as brown or pink and greens as beige—Legaspi embraced bold, expressive palettes that defied his condition. His paintings often confronted social injustices, particularly the struggles of the working class, transforming everyday hardship into powerful visual narratives. Critic Alice Guillermo described his works as possessing “the power and fascinating quality… that strike deep into subconscious reserves of energy and imagination,” functioning both as metaphors for the human condition and as vivid reflections of inner states of being.
The present work departs from his cubist human figures to present a poignant still life rich with symbolic weight. A weathered worker’s shirt, worn and creased from use, lies against a textured, earthen background, its pockets adorned with rows of circular tokens — each bearing the faint image of a face, like medals of memory and identity. Above it, a folded paper boat, patterned in vibrant reds and ochres, rests as if caught between fragility and resilience. The composition speaks of labor and dignity, of the lives and stories carried by the working class. While the shirt anchors the piece in grounded realism, the painterly texture and color harmonies recall Legaspi’s mastery of surface and form, making this not just an object study but a quiet yet resonant social portrait. (Jed Daya)Cruz’s particular brand of abstraction is one of a tangible and tactile kind. Known for his thick gobs of oil paint, which he spatters, squeezes, and streaks across his massive canvases, the three-dimensional quality of his works physically demands attention. It looms large over its viewer, the overlapping layers of oil paint leaning heavy both literally and metaphorically.
Especially in his earlier works, Cruz rarely applies paint with a brush — he either squeezes them out straight from the tube, uses a painting knife to spread them across the canvas, or, for fine loops and coils, utilizes an icing bag and applies the paint, similar to a pâtissier with their baked goods.
Hailing from Malabon City, Cruz’s abstractions echo the town's hustle and bustle. “The abstraction that I do comes from my childhood, from my neighbourhood in Malabon,” he muses, as Bambina Olivares wrote in a 2025 Tatler article about the artist. “It was a typical Philippine baroque environment, you know, where it’s mix and match, using all colours that you can combine. It’s chaos, but for me, I find it more beautiful. It’s real, it’s honest, the streets, the noise, the laundry lines… There was no order.”
That chaos is evident in this 2014 piece. Just two years after his international debut at Prima Marella, his visual language rings clear and true in his long, deliberate paint strokes. A factoid many may not know about Cruz is that he is colorblind; thus, his sense of color is instinctual, freely used and unabashedly utilized. In lieu of this, his works are often more physical in nature, as he taps more into their more textural qualities rather than how they are defined in terms of hue, value, or saturation.
The canvases of Jigger Cruz argue for the place of defacement and destruction in the realm of art. With two paintings happening simultaneously in one canvas — a Classical painting buried underneath the “Philippine baroque” style vandalism — his works straddle between Western and local sensibilities. Hervé Lancelin described it best in his 2025 Jigger Cruz: Cover, erase, be born, where he said: “This pictorial stratigraphy functions as a metaphor for Philippine colonial history: Western references remain present, unavoidable, but no longer dictate the ultimate meaning of the work.”
Undeniable violence and destruction are happening in Cruz’s oeuvre. Any artist in the postcolonial context is faced with a similar question: how should one go about creating art when art itself is held to a colonial standard? Cruz throws his own lot in the ring: he refuses to conform to it, yet he does not ignore its historical implications. True creation does not exist in a vacuum; it builds not on a void. It builds upon ruins, the destruction of old values, which Cruz still leaves visible on the canvas, not as an actor but as a specter, a ghost, that must constantly be conjured for art to move forward. (Hannah Andrea Valiente)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":0,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":0,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":34,"lot_status":"UNSOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":0,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":68599,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/209/242/lot/126.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":125,"next":127,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}