{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":38500,"auction_id":52,"set_id":80,"lot_number":"133","artist":"Nena Saguil (1924-1994)","title":"Still Life","starting_price":1800000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1950 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"22” x 28” (56 cm x 71 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private Collection, Makati City","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Simplicia “Nena” Laconico Saguil  (1914-1994) was a pioneering  Filipino modern artist.  In 2006 President Arroyo posthumously  awarded Saguil a Presidential Medal of Merit.  \nShe was known as a feminist, a mystic and a recluse. She spoke of being a lonely child at a large family.  Not wanting to attend Catholic school, as her conservative parents wished her to, Saguil studied art at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts where artist Anita Magsaysay was a classmate.  Saguil was awarded a certificate in painting in 1933.  The school was then considered a bastion of conservatism in art, and Saguil later told a friend what she thought  of some of the instructors there: Fernando Amorsolo was a very  commercial artist and she did not admire his uncle Fabian De La Rosa.  \nAfter World War II, Saguil was able to complete her studies at  the University of the Philippines.  She found herself in the circle of Hernando Ocampo and his many artist friends. During this period,  Saguil became increasingly interested in modern art, and was  attracted to the work of Pablo Picasso.  She completed her Bachelors Degree in 1949, earning an Award of Excellence.  \nHer works of this period include a satirical self portrait entitled  “Vanity” showing a woman preening before a mirror, a take-off  on a work by Monet.  She also produced a number of floral still-lifes painted with a light, Impressionist touch. \nOne of these, dated 1950, is in this exhibition.  Saguil eschews  traditional composition.  Her flowers as strewn on a surface seemingly in disarray.  She barely attempts to be botanically correct, but the blooms appear to include frangipani or plumeria, hibiscus, and lilies. Some colors and textures hint of languorous softness; some suggest robust resilience.   \nIn the language of flowers, plumeria symbolizes “waiting for love”; they lie beside what appear to be bluebells, which may symbolize humility and love.  The hibiscus symbolizes “delicate beauty” and “perfect bride”.  \nInterestingly, the orange lilies, which may symbolize “hatred”  are sustained in a glass full of water.  They are surrounded by  a multitude of orange blooms rendered with slashed, fiery impasto, which lie fuming beside an empty earthenware pot, which may allude to virginity and solitary life.  \nWe have no evidence that Saguil was conversant with the Victorian language of flowers.  But was she subconsciously expressing the frustrations of her 36 years of life? She was not that successful in her relationships, and she maintained the myth that she was 10 years younger than she really was.  \nNevertheless, this still-life is evidence of her efforts to break from  the academic mold and that in her art she lay in the full embrace  of modernism.  \nAt the time this painting was done, around 1950,  Saguil became active in the newly formed Philippine Art Gallery (P.A.G.) run by Lyd Arguilla, serving as a volunteer watching over the gallery.  Saguil eventually exhibited there and became associated with other notable Philippine modernists. \nIn 1954, a Walter Damrosch Scholarship allowed Saguil to move  to Spain, where she studied abstract painting.  Another scholarship, from the Instituto de Cultura Hispania allowed her to further her  studies.  In 1956 Saguil moved to Paris to further her studies at the Ecole des Artes Americaine.  The following year Saguil had a solo show at Galerie Raymond Creuze in Paris, where she exhibited works with linear and geometric elements.  She later experimented with  a syringe technique similar to that of Fernando Zobel and Lee  Aguinaldo.  \nBy the 1960s, isolated from the Philippine art scene, Saguil lived  in solitude in a dingy apartment in the Saint Germain des Pres district, sometimes working as a maid to support herself.  She had lived and worked in Paris for over a decade before coming back to Manila for  a retrospective exhibition in 1968.  \nBy that time, the subject of her work can be described as cosmic.  She was a Jehovah’s Witness in her later decades, and her work  often contains a sense of spirituality and religious feeling, in which she subsumed her earlier aspirations and desires.  Her landscapes and “Inscapes” presented her journey from the Material World  to the Spiritual.  Her works from this period would overflow with vibrant energy and intriguing contradictions.\n-Ramon N. Villegas","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Nena Saguil</strong> (1924-1994)<br /><em>Still Life</em><br />signed and dated 1950 (lower right)<br />oil on canvas<br />22&rdquo; x 28&rdquo; (56 cm x 71 cm)</p>","alias":null,"hp":1200000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":1200000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":1401600,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":36790,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/52/80/lot/133.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":132,"next":134,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}