{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":22258,"auction_id":24,"set_id":43,"lot_number":"167","artist":"Vicente Manansala (1910 - 1981)","title":"Planting Rice","starting_price":1200000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1967 (upper right) ","medium":"watercolor on paper ","size":"42 1/2\" x 31\" (108 cm x 78 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private collection, USA. \nLeon Gallery, The Kingly Treasures Auction, \nDecember 3, 2016, Makati City, Lot 112.","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Black and white compositions manifest the absolute prowess of an artist. The capacity of color to convey emotion using its spectacle of vividness is a doubleedged sword, for it can conceal the potency of a work. In the absence of vibrant and striking hues, a painting rendered in black and white gives prominence to an artist’s mastery of lines and overall finesse in accentuating the subject. For Vicente Manansala, color had its manner of “charming” or “seducing” the viewer. However, he often described Pablo Picasso’s Guernica as the exemplary model of a painting’s innate elegance. Manansala’s black and white composition was an optimal course of action to preserve the genuineness of his art.
\nManansala renders the subject in this piece in an inkblot style reminiscent of the Rorschach Test while still preserving the Filipino sensibility of his distinctive cubism. The black and white watercolor accentuates the figure, showcasing Manansala’s mastery of executing linear and tonal elements. Manansala excelled in handling the watercolor, an instrument that many artists consider complicated due to the immediacy and spontaneity required to produce an excellent outcome. As he had used the medium since childhood, Manansala successfully practiced restraint – an indispensable practice in employing this method. It was among the artist’s preferred medium, expressing that it was “for relaxation; and the beauty of watercolor… it demands that you control it.” In Discovering Manansala, Isabel Nazareno describes Manansala’s black and white endeavor: “The weight that Manansala placed upon feeling or mood did not mean that the artist let loose his brush, without any heed to where it landed. Perhaps, because of his early academic training, balance and restraint were ingredients that were always visible in Manansala’s pieces.” In addition, Alice Guillermo further expounds: “Manansala went through a black and white phase of crucifixions and Madonna and Child paintings… In composition, his works often feature lines of perspective with receding space, although shallow, but the recession in depth is simultaneously defined by lines and planes which create spatial ambiguities.”
\nIn its entirety, Manansala reinterpreted and indigenized cubism as he took inspiration from his Filipino environment.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Vicente Manansala (1910 - 1981) Planting Rice signed and dated 1967 (upper right) watercolor on paper 42 1/2\" x 31\" (108 cm x 78 cm)