{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":3531,"auction_id":6,"set_id":8,"lot_number":"132","artist":"José Joya (1931 - 1995)","title":"Susurro del Mar (Whisper of the Sea)","starting_price":4000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1960 (lower right); signed, titled, dedicated 'To Ernie Franco / From Joya / 1/31/61', and dated Diciembre 1960 (verso)","medium":"oil on wood","size":"18” x 24” (46 cm x 61 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by Josefa Joya Baldovino confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":"Private Collection, Bacolod City","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"A year after graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1953 from the University of the Philippines and becoming its first magna cum laude, Jose Joya would show no signs of slowing down, accomplishing feats and receiving honors that no other contemporary of his would come closer to his prestige. In 1954, he was awarded by the Instituto de Cultura Hispanica a scholarship grant to Madrid (1954-55). Shortly thereafter, in 1956, Joya received a Fulbright Smith-Mundt scholarship, allowing him to pursue a master's degree in painting at Michigan's Cranbrook Academy of Art, one of America's leading graduate schools for art, architecture, craft, and design.<br /><br />Joya had begun fiddling with abstraction after his UP graduation, spurred by his encounters and friendships with the leading modernists of his time, such as Luz, Zo?bel, and H.R. Ocampo, and his participation at exhibitions sponsored by the Philippine Art Gallery. Joya once shared: \"Caught in the crossfire between my traditionalist mentors and modernist friends, I was left with serious doubts about my ability to absorb much of traditional art. But while I have never had cause to regret the disciplines pounded into me by my teachers, I found that the PAG circle served to expand and enrich my university education.\"<br /><br />At Cranbrook, Joya did several ink wash drawings, characterized by their dynamic gestural lines, using twigs. His Cranbrook years also coincided with the dominance of the Abstract Expressionist movement in the West. In 1956, the first year of his American sojourn, Joya had the opportunity to mount his first American solo exhibition at the Thrall Library in Middletown, New York. New York, particularly New York City, was the heart and soul of abstract expressionism. Death had just struck Jackson Pollock, the leading force in abstract expressionism. But his contemporaries, including Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko, were very much alive and well, championing the cause of the art movement.<br /><br /> It was in this exciting American creative atmosphere that Joya found his zealous commitment to Abstract Expressionism. Also at Cranbrook, Joya came under the tutelage of Hungarian-born American painter Zoltan Sepeshy, considered one of America's greatest art teachers and former mentor to Anita Magsayay- Ho. Sepeshy had this principle of \"teaching by not teaching\" and the artist's responsibility of \"looking forward, never backward.\" These aphorisms encouraged Joya, and he likely foresaw how he could deliver a unique Filipino idiom to the abstract expressionist language through landscapes that tap into our sentimentality and emotional expressiveness.<br /><br /> Susurro del Mar encapsulates Joya's unique mastery of abstract expressionism and refinement of his style. It was created in 1960, a year after he had painted his most documented, iconic, favorite, and AAP-award-winning work, Space Transfiguration (which Leon Gallery auctioned in The Asian Cultural Council Auction 2018 and holds the world record for Philippine abstract art). The work’s title is a Spanish phrase meaning \"whisper of the sea.\"<br /><br />  A sheer progression from the turbulent Space Transfiguration, this work exhibits restrained balance and quiet elegance. Swathes of muted colors evoke the ocean's soft caress and gentle tides, capturing an ethereal atmosphere. Joya sublimely engenders an intimate emotional attachment through his relatively graceful strokes that become stimulative and express a kind of pensive sensuality that is both subtle and spirited.<br /><br /> The heavy impastos are concentrated in the left corner of the piece, signifying the left ear's attunement to music and emotion because of its direct connection to the brain's right hemisphere, which controls creativity and artistic and musical skills. Whether or not Joya knew this fact, the artist remains brilliant in producing a work that appeals more to the delicacy of our senses and the tenderness of our emotions rather than the intellect and the rigidity of logic.<br /><br /> Joya's lyrical kind of abstract expressionism in this work brings into mind a passage from American author Kate Chopin's 1899 magnum opus, The Awakening: \"The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.\"<br /><br /> As such, we are invited to step into the intimacy of our inner being, engulf our spirits, and bathe in the graceful flow of our minds toward sublime meditation and eventual enlightenment.<br /><br /> A year after Susurro del Mar, Joya would receive the Republic Cultural Heritage Award for Painting and the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award in Art. (A.M.)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":6000000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":6000000,"userBid":9583,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":7008000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":3784,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/6/8/lot/132.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":3785,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/6/8/lot/132a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":131,"next":133,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}