{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":3588,"auction_id":6,"set_id":8,"lot_number":"184","artist":"Eduardo Castrillo (1942 - 2016)","title":"The Race to Progress","starting_price":1600000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 11-79 (right)","medium":"bas-relief sculpture in antique and sanded finish","size":"30\" x 86\" (76 cm x 218 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by Nixxio L. Castrillo confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"The 1970s marked Eduardo Castrillo's artistic coming of age. During that decade, Castrillo was at the forefront of Philippine sculpture. In 1970, he became one of the first recipients of the inaugural CCP Thirteen Artists Awards. In 1971, Castrillo received a string of prestigious awards: the Republic Cultural Heritage Award, the Araw ng Maynila Centennial Award, the Outstanding Makati Resident Award, and the Ten Outstanding Young Men Award.<br /><br /> It was also in 1971 when Castrillo became the Philippine representative in Sculpture at the Paris Biennial. There, he became convinced that \"some of his techniques are not being used in Europe, particularly embossed copper, and constructed and welded brass,\" as Alfredo Roces writes in his book Breaking Out: An Eduardo Castrillo Sculptural Tour. He also visited Germany in 1974 as a cultural visitor and guest lecturer upon the invitation of the Federal Republic of Germany, becoming the first Filipino sculptor to do so.<br /><br /> Castrillo also created many of his most iconic works during this decade: La Pieta (1971); The Redemption (1974); The Spirit of Pinaglabanan (1974); Rajah Sulayman (1976); Pillar of Growth (1977); and The Organized Quest for Health (unveiled at the World Health Organization Center, Geneva, Switzerland, 1979).<br /><br /> Maturing in the '70s, Castrillo integrated his art within the larger context of societal struggle against the dictatorship of Marcos, Sr. Castrillo found empathy with the toiling masses, drawing from his distressed and deprived younger years. From his first major public sculpture, 1966's Youth's Cry of Defiance, installed at Fort Santiago, which encapsulates the revolutionary rage of the youth during Marcos Sr.'s first term (characterized by indiscriminate borrowing of funds for his edifice complex and granting behest loans to his cronies), Castrillo's social conscience and the social imperative of art that is in line with the masses' interests and ideals are evident. Even Castrillo's entries to the Paris Biennial, Clash and Oppressed, deal with the struggle against injustice in Philippine society.<br /><br /> In 1968, Castrillo became involved in the protests against the brewing dictatorship. For his association with the opposition, he would be incarcerated in 1976, receiving death threats, and his Makati studio mysteriously burned down.<br /><br /> From 1973 to 1980, Castrillo worked on his Catharsis series to vent out his rage against the social cancer and his burning desires for radical societal development. Roces notes that \"on the strength of his Catharsis series alone, Castrillo has hammered out a secure niche in Philippine art.\"<br /><br />  Castrillo created the work at hand concurrently with the Catharsis series. It depicts a congregation of people gathering in solidarity, with their fists raised and their physiques as sturdy as their aspirations for the motherland. They concertedly bolt toward that elusive yet realizable vision of genuine progress, proving that they are the makers of history and the potent force in achieving a progressive society. Castrillo created the piece in 1979, the height of Martial Law and a time of economic fragility due to the ills of a neoliberal economic trajectory—the liberalization of the economy to foreign monopoly capital, inducing a foreigninvestment-driven and export-oriented industrialization, killing our industries, hampering national development, and further worsening the inequality gap between the rich and the poor. <br /><br /> The jagged planes powerfully evoke an agitating feeling. The horizontal lines and orientation convey a sense of moving forward and Castrillo's amplification of the peoples' eagerness to liberate themselves from darkness. The Race to Progress not only encapsulates Castrillo at the peak of his creative prowess but, moreover, his unswerving commitment to make art that echoes the people’s desire for liberty from socioeconomic distress and inequality, repression, and fascism. The work can also be seen as a precursor piece that would culminate in Castrillo's Inang Bayan (Bantayog ng mga Bayani, 1992) and People Power Monument (EDSA, 1993), monuments that embody the nation's struggle towards democracy.<br /><br />  Castrillo once said in a 1974 interview with the Associated Press: \"Whenever I am doing a big commission, or big artwork, particularly in the Philippines, I put myself, I put my artistry aside, and I deal more, and I feel more as a social being. A social being that has a responsibility of educating or orienting the great number of people….\"<br /><br /> Indeed, no one should be left in the race to progress—that painstaking yet rewarding path to emancipation. 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