{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":1807,"auction_id":4,"set_id":5,"lot_number":"85","artist":"Hernando R. Ocampo (1911 - 1978)","title":"Dilemma","starting_price":8000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1958 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"24\" x 32\" (61 cm x 81 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Gloria Villaraza-Guzman<br />\nLorenzo “Larry” J. Cruz<br />\nAcquired from the above","exhibited":null,"literature":"Hufana, Alejandrino G., ed. Pamana 13 June 1974: A Cultural\nQuarterly Published by the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Cultural\nCenter of the Philippines. Manila. 1974. Listed as “Dilemma”\n(oil, 23-1/4 x 34 “, 1958) on page 18 as no. ‘185' under the artist's list\nof paintings and owned by Gloria Villaraza-Guzman.","write_up":"THE ‘YOUNG\nTURKS’ OF ARTS\nAND LETT RS\nThe Kit and enny Tatad H.R. Ocampo\nby LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL<br /><br />At the turn of the century, the ‘Young Turks’ would\nbecome the equivalent of the Filipino ilustrado,\nrepresenting a movement that would oppose the\nOttoman empire and do so in exile in Paris.<br /><br />In mid-century Manila and the following hurly-burly of the\nSixties and Seventies, it would also be used as the term for\nthe impatient young men who would seek to challenge the\nestablishment.<br /><br />If the 1950s found its Ground Zero at the Philippine Art\nGallery and Ermita and Malate, the subsequent decades\nwould also such places as ‘Arfel Homes’ along Visayas\nAvenue in Quezon City. A development pioneered by Arturo\nFelix Tiongco, it was composed of 16 homes that attracted\nboth the newly-wed and the up-and-coming professionals\nwho would later be the country’s movers and shakers.<br /><br />At ‘Arfel’ lived not only Francisco “Kit” and Fernandita\n“Fenny” Tatad (Kit would bedestined to be Ferdinand\nMarcos’ youngest cabinet minister and first Press\nSecretary, later the Ministry of Public Information), but\nalso Dick Gordon (then the youngest delegate to the\n1971 Constitutional Convention, later Olongapo mayor\nand then Philippine senator), teen stars Vilma Santos\n(successively, mayor, governor and congresswoman of\nBatangas) and Edgar Mortiz (who would re-invent himself\ninto an influential tv director). Also living in “back to back\nhomes”, recalls Mrs. Fely Tatad, was Larry Cruz who would\nalso play an important role in Palace communications.\nFely herself, was a writer for the Economic Monitor and\nlater the tv behemoth, ABS-CBN.<br /><br />Recalls, Kit Tatad, “For the next ten years we ran the\nPress Office together without any major booboos or\nblunders. We became fast friends and started wearing the\nsame brand of watches and ties, and going to the same\nbespoke tailor for our suits and our barongs, which meant\nIl Signore, which was also his own. We also moved into\nthe same tiny subdivision called Arfel which put us next\ndoor to the two most popular teenage craze of that time,\nVilma Santos and Edgar Mortiz who shared a common\nbackyard, and the future Mayor of Olongapo and later Senator Richard Gordon. Although we were both very\nyoung, and the reporters were the most senior in their\nrespective organizations, we won their deep professional\nrespect simply by having Larry beat the daylights out of\nthem at the poker table.<br /><br />“When martial law came, I became Secretary of the newly\ncreated Department of Public Information in addition to\nbeing Press Secretary, and Larry became in addition to his\nold job the Director of the Bureau of National and Foreign\nInformation (BNFI). It was here where he first unleashed\nhis creativity as an information manager.”<br /><br />Lorenzo “Larry” J. Cruz, was none other than the son of E.\nAguilar Cruz, journalist, artist and the man who conjured\nup the name “Neo-Realists” for the abstractionist elite\nled by his closest friend Hernando R. Ocampo and whose\nhome was the legendary Philippine Art Gallery.<br /><br />Fely would recall that their home and Larry’s would be\nused interchangeably for artists’ gatherings as well as\npainting sessions, making alive the promise of the Filipino\n‘Young Turks’ in arts and letters. The artists would include\nnot only H.R. Ocampo and Cesar Legaspi but also Jose\nJoya and Malang Santos, whose wife had put up a gallery\nof her own.<br /><br />The work at hand, Dilemma, falls squarely into the\ncharacteristic motifs of the period, the mask and the\nshield. It is a sinuous allegory of temptation — the twinheaded snakes with a scorpion tale that have already\ncaptured three manlike shapes; other men struggle\nto flee and take refuge in a mountain of reflective,\nmirrored vanity or arrogant flight. The ‘highly organic\ncomposition in fluid, organic forms and scintillating\ncolors’ was achieved, notes art critic Rod Paras-Perez of\nHR’s inimitable style, “through the use of broken color\nstrokes, juxtaposed very much like the Impressionists.”<br /><br />Always, as in this work with fascinating combinations\nof shade and hue, H.R. Ocampo would triumph “in no\nlonger attaining a semblance of reality nor the capture\nof atmospheric effects… but to intensify colors and make\nthem vibrate with feelings.”<br /><br />In this regard, Dilemma captures the brave spirit of a\nnew Filipino generation.\n\n \n\n\n","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":22000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":22000000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":26435200,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":2021,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/4/5/lot/85.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[],"prev":84,"next":86,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}