{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":39771,"auction_id":60,"set_id":88,"lot_number":"27","artist":"Onib Olmedo (1937-2003)","title":"La Demoiselle De Manille","starting_price":700000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1995 (lower right)","medium":"mixed media","size":"72” x 36” (183 cm x 91 cm)","property":null,"coa":"This piece is accompanied by a certificate issued","provenance":"Crucible Gallery","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"While the master Fernando Amorsolo romanticized rural life and depicted an idealized representational style of the female nude as ever perfect, pretty and youthful with classical proportions, Onib Olmedo reveled in a marvelously dark, Baconian, angsty, contorted, unpretty expressionist depiction of the female body. Olmedo was fascinated by the female form and painted the female nude with the obsession, compulsion and passion of an art collector. He was a "hoarder" of female beauty in the female nude using his uniquely sensuous, soulful expressionistic rendition of the woman's body. From the late 1980's up to his demise in 1996, the female nude filled his countless sheets of paper & canvases. Although his style was described by critics as expressionistic, he co-opted Cubist touches in his interpretation of the human body & still life. His many nudes attest to the fusion of expressionism & cubist touches. This particular life-size nude in mixed media using pastel on acrylic primed paper is a fine example of this fusion. The face of the woman here, her pose and mood bear an uncanny resemblance to Pablo Picasso’s groundbreaking work “Les Demoiselles D’Avignon” (The Women of Avignon Street in Barcelona, Spain). “Les Demoiselles” marks Picasso’s break from realism and representational art; and foreshadows the future characteristics of Cubism. Art historians call this work of Picasso proto or pre-Cubist. This work was not just controversial in terms of style, but also in terms of subject and content. Picasso’s subject here were the prostitutes of the red light district of Barcelona (Avignon Street) in provocative poses with their seductive gaze fixed on the viewer. These women were not pretty faces like those of his earlier, more classical inspired periods. These faces were inspired by the angular simplicity of African masks and Iberian sculpture. The painting caused such a stir in Catholic turn of the century Spain that it had to be renamed just to give in to the public’s cry for decency. The iconoclastic, nonconformist, bohemian Picasso reluctantly gave in.\nWhile Olmedo’s style has always been classified as expressionist, there is no denying his Cubist influence and his admiration for Picasso. Just like Picasso, Olmedo preferred painting the common people in the decrepit, artsy, bohemian nightlife district of the urban jungle littered with vendors, musicians and prostitutes. With Olmedo's compassionate eyes and hands, a streetwalker turns into a goddess and enchantress. He finds the sacred in the ordinary — the profane turned into godly.\nAlthough the face of Olmedo’s nude resembles the faces of the women in “Les Demoiselle D’Avignon”, there are remarkable stylistic differences. Picasso turns the women’s breast into geometric, angular forms which is the hallmark of Cubism. However, Olmedo retains the roundness, sensuality and voluptuousness of a woman’s figure which he stylized in his unique expressionistic style. Even the rendering and shading of Picasso’s figures tend to be flat. Olmedo’s shadings of the nude emphasize the curves through the light reflected on the breasts, hips and thighs — parts of the female anatomy that define “woman” and parts that evoke eroticism. Picasso deconstructs the entire space and depicts the women in various angles or points of view simultaneously on a flat space without the benefit of the traditional, classical three dimensional perspective. Olmedo on the other hand, is stylized but his elements and object are recognizable — the floor, the wall with a painting, and the “Cubisitc” nude woman shown in several poses playing and flirting with the chair which are simultaneously recorded on the surface.\nWhile Picasso favored the use of Mediterranean earth tones ranging from shades of burnt sienna, yellow ochre, terra cotta, beiges, flesh and rose brown, Olmedo opts for black and cool opalescent shades of tropical oceanic blue green to foam and sea green combined with rose beige, flesh and pink. His use of black is very sophisticated and stunning. Black here gives the work both an Oriental touch and an expressionistic touch in the mold of Francis Bacon. Unlike his contemporary Filipino artists whose works scream, sing and dance with fiesta colors, Olmedo chooses a somber palate of quiet brooding, stoic pain and murmurings of melancholia. This life-size Picasso inspired nude painted in 1995 is absolutely mesmerizing. The spontaneous, thick, broad strokes and dashes have reached a richness that is usually only achieved through the use of oil paint. He is a master and experimenter of the pastel medium. This is one of Olmedo’s major homage to the woman’s figure and his celebration of the sybaritic, earthly pleasure of gazing and painting the female nude — a pleasure and art that he indulged in until his final days in 1996. This piece crowns him as the king of the pastel medium and a major modern master of the female nude in the Philippines.\n- Christine Carlos","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"

Onib Olmedo (1937-1996)
La Demoiselle De Manille
signed and dated 1995 (lower right)
mixed media
72” x 36” (183 cm x 91 cm)

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