{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":26578,"auction_id":31,"set_id":52,"lot_number":"148","artist":"Alfonso Ossorio (1916 - 1990","title":"Untitled # 5","starting_price":2200000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1975 (lower left)","medium":"watercolor and ink on paper","size":"30” x 22 1/2” (76 cm x 57 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist","exhibited":"Alfonso Ossorio: Grazing Light, Leon Gallery, April  21 - May 12, 2017  <br /><br />Alfonso Ossorio: A Survey 1940 – 1989, Ayala  Museum, Makati, February 26 – June 17, 2018","literature":"Rejante-Manahan, Liliane and Ottmann, Klaus.\nAlfonso Ossorio: A Survey 1940 - 1989. Ayala\nFoundation Inc., p. 75, Plate 48<br /><br />\nRejante-Manahan, Liliane and Reyes, Cid. Alfonso\nOssorio: Grazing Light. Leon Gallery, 2017, pp. 50-\n51, Plate 9","write_up":"The Filipino-American artist Alfonso Ossorio is often heralded as one of the greatest abstractionists of his time. Though Ossorio was born in Manila, Ossorio and his family eventually moved to the United States at the age of fourteen. After graduating from Portsmouth Priory, Ossorio attended Harvard University in order to study Fine Arts. After becoming an American Citizen, Ossorio landed a job as a medical illustrator for the United States Army during World War II. As an artist, Ossorio first experimented with Surrealism, one of the major styles that dominated most of the Western art world at the time. Ossorio also developed a lifelong relationship with the famous Jackson Pollock. It is often stated that Pollock and Ossorio would often discuss various topics revolving around the conceptualization and production of their own respective works. Thus, Pollock’s works are heavily inspired by Ossorio’s and vice versa. By the 1950s, Ossorio began to move away from his Surrealist temperament and towards a much more Abstract Expressionism approach. Ossorio began experimenting with various paints such as oil and enamel in order to achieve his desired effects. His works during this period are characterized by strong and bold gestural strokes. But unlike Pollock’s, Ossorio’s work often contained a sense of familiar cohesion. Though one can sense the chaos within Ossorio’s abstractions, one can also find a familiar sense of harmony through his elements. While Pollock’s works are often characterized as energetic, spontaneous, and immediate, Ossorio’s abstractions can be seen as calculated, reserved, and nuanced. Ossorio’s later works adopted this style through the artist’s use of various objects within his artworks. Ossorio’s Congregations sought to confront the complexity of the world by showing how each element and aspect is unique in its own right.<br /><br /> This watercolor piece showcases that despite Ossorio’s artistic development from surrealism, to Abstract Expressionism and then to his iconic Congregations, he never boxed himself into just one particular style or treatment. This 1975 piece contains within it a more Abstract Expressionist approach, one that is often attributed to Ossorio’s works from the 50s and 60s. The monochromatic painting exemplifies the artist’s complex and nuanced contributions to the genre through its undulating and almost meditative gestural strokes. The piece also showcases Ossorio’s masterful use of shifting shadows and tones that renders his elements with a sense of depth through aesthetic interplay. One can clearly see that no matter the style, Ossorio’s complex and nuanced piece shows us Ossorio’s complex artistic philosophy.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":3200000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":3200000,"userBid":5930,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":3737600,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":23975,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/31/52/lot/148.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"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":147,"next":149,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}