{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":37232,"auction_id":48,"set_id":76,"lot_number":"102","artist":"Cesar Legaspi (1917-1994)","title":"Workers","starting_price":1800000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1953 (lower right)","medium":"oil on masonite board","size":"25 1/2” x 35 1/2” (64 cm x 90 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"The Philippine Art Gallery (PAG)","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Many of the Filipino modernists in the 50s painted in the manner of Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne. Some of them were even representational - namely Botong Francisco. However, even from the early years, Cesar Legaspi was mainly an abstractionist, limning his favorite human torsos with afterthoughts of fantasy, rather than with a tactile sense of reality, as if he was catching the lights of lanterns from their stroboscopic reverberations in the mind.   While HR Ocampo moved toward abstraction, Manansala, Tabuena and Legaspi who formed the true core of the Neorealists, opted to remain in the figurative mode. Common to their work was the cubist influence that they eagerly assimilated upon Manansala’s return from France in 1953, the year “Workers” was executed. Yet clearly enough, the paintings of Cesar Legaspi and the other key members of the group serve as an important example of how a Western style, namely cubism, became transformed and changed — indigenized, in fact to suit the local sensibility and temperament.   Since Legaspi broke away from the influence of Ocampo and of Manansala, he developed a clearly distinguishable style. The artist’s peculiar approach tends to lapidify his forms because of a central allegory operating in his works: Man against nature is a struggle which often results in man and nature merging as one, as in stone sculpture depicting human forms. Much can be said about the sculpturesque qualities in Cesar Legaspi’s paintings of human forms. Dynamic movement always fascinated Legaspi and this he explored in a number of recent works in which welding human forms in contrasting tones become tightly interlocking positive and negative shapes, yin and yang, that swirl in open compositions placing dense masses with free shapes.   Dark shadows delineating musculature and the various hues of red and orange give the painting a warm, palpable glow. Although the composition is deconstructed into a montage of geometric shapes, it is not chaos the viewer sees, but a rhythmic interweaving of form.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":3000000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":3000000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":3504000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":35265,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/48/76/lot/102.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":101,"next":103,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}