{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":61596,"auction_id":209,"set_id":242,"lot_number":"18","artist":"Manuel Rodriguez Sr. (1912 - 2017)","title":"Family","starting_price":300000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1955 (lower right)","medium":"casein on wood","size":"20\" x 28 1/2\" (51 cm x 72 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private collection, USA","exhibited":"Art Association of the Philippines at the Northern Motors Showroom, 8th Annual Art Exhibition, Manila, 23 February 1955","literature":null,"write_up":"In the last few days of February 1955, a sensational case shocked the Philippine art scene. It was the 8th Annual Art Exhibition of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP), and the Northern Motors showroom at Isaac Peral (now United Nations Avenue) was abuzz with movement and, underlying it all, a bubbling tension. The ceremonial ribbon was cut, and then, in full view of everyone, a group of nineteen or twenty artists strode into the room. One by one, they removed their paintings from the wall and walked out, choosing instead to display their works in the open air across the showroom. Thirty-two paintings were reported to have been displayed on the first day; by February 27, over 200 paintings hung on the walls, trees, and improvised stands across the street, with a total of thirty-eight artists now identifying themselves as part of the “rebel” group.<br><br> But it was not necessarily pre-ordained by his background. The 1955 walkout was the culmination of the decadeslong battle between the conservatives and the modernists in Philippine art, a battle that traced back to the 1st AAP competition of 1948, when the first stirrings of bad blood between the two factions spread.<br><br> Faced with their uncertain future following the devastating Second World War, the AAP sought to invigorate the Philippine art scene. On the priority list was an annual competition, with cash prizes soaring up to P1,500 for the first prize. A total of 100 painters submitted some 190 works. Out of the six winners, four of them unmistakably leaned into the emerging school of modernism: Carlos “Botong” Francisco, Vicente Manansala, Cesar Legaspi, and Hernando R. Ocampo.<br><br> A great debate over modern and conservative art thus arose. At the forefront of the battle stood two giants in the Philippine art scene: Victorio Edades, who advocated for modern art, and Guillermo Tolentino, who upheld the value of conservative art. Though conversations between Edades and Tolentino date back to as early as 1936, they ramped up following the 1948 competition results, culminating in a series of essays they published in The Sunday Times Magazine and This Week, the magazine of the Manila Chronicle, spanning from September 19 to November 7, 1948.<br><br> Soon enough, several writers threw in their lot, defending either the modernists or the conservative painters. The zeitgeist of the times, however, was leaning towards the conservatives. Society at large was unprepared for the modernists, who were criticized for their unbridled love for distortion and their penchant for drawing unpleasant themes like old age and poverty. The Philippines, still traumatized from the war, yearned for the pastoral and the beautiful, elements that the conservatives espoused.<br><br> The conservatives, for their part, were unsatisfied with the results of the competition. They viewed the upstart modernists as possible competitors in the already struggling market, and their sheer number proved they were a formidable force to consider. So the AAP, to stay afloat, implemented a new rule: there would be two brackets for the subsequent competitions, one for the conservatives and one for the modernists. It was an odd choice, but a necessary one, and it worked to keep the hostilities at bay — for a while.<br><br> Then, the 1955 competition rolled in.<br><br> The 8th Annual AAP competition still comprised the separate categories for modern and conservative art, but it contained one crucial difference: the Rotary Golden Anniversary award. In collaboration with AAP, the Rotary Club held a competition for its 50th anniversary and announced that they would give three cash awards for the paintings or pieces of sculpture that best interpret their group's themes. P2,500 was being offered as the first prize reward, and it was open to all schools of thought without the separation that segregated the moderns and the conservatives until then. The contest result was announced, and three moderns emerged victorious: Galo B. Ocampo, Manuel Rodriguez, Sr., and Vicente Manansala, in that order.<br><br> All the resentment bubbling within the conservatives exploded. The past few years saw the gradual economic and social successes of the modernists, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. So, at the opening of the exhibition in the last week of February 1955, they took their stand. They decried rigged decisions and biased judges and, in protest, walked out of the Northern Motors showroom to host their own open-air counter exhibition across the street. <br><br> Manuel Rodriguez Sr.’s Family was one of the competition pieces in that monumental exhibit. Family embodies the distortion that had rocked the Philippine art scene up to this point. Freeing himself from the shackles of form and style, Rodriguez’s figures feature elongated necks and small, pitch-black eyes, prizing emotional relief over anatomical correctness.<br><br> Rodriguez understood that to break the rules, one must master them first. In an interview with Eva Florentino as published in Manuel Rodriguez, Sr.: Into the Threshold, he said, “To be an artist, one first knows how to draw. One must first know how to copy what one sees. Once you know how to draw, you learn the truth. And when you know the truth, you can express the truth. After this, you can distort.”<br><br> Rodriguez’s grasp of anatomy is evident in his masterful distortion of the bodies in Family. It sets a precedent for the artist’s trailblazing spirit; following the war, Rodriguez would pioneer not only modernism in terms of painting but also printmaking, as he had almost single-handedly revived Philippine printmaking through his ardent campaigning for what was then considered “dead art.”<br><br> Family was at least Rodriguez’s second known entry at the 8th Annual AAP exhibition. His best-known piece from this competition is Liberty Wells, the second prize-winning piece of the now-famous Rotary Golden Anniversary Award. 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