{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":40289,"auction_id":63,"set_id":91,"lot_number":"152","artist":"Carlos\"Botong\" Francisco (1912-1969)","title":"Landscape","starting_price":2000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1944 (lower left)","medium":"oil on board","size":"19” x 25” (48 cm x 64 cm)","property":"Property From the collection of the dee family","coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"“Landscape with Two Farmers” is an easel work in oil, and because Carlos “Botong” Francisco did very few of these, they are highly prized.  The dynamic pictorialism of the dark, yet flame-like grass and the vertical curvilinear lines depicting the trees  is different from the usual representational distinctions between foreground and background at that time.  It demonstrated a  subtle, but apparent, Gauguinesque approach to art that broke away from straightforward academic pictorialism; curvaceous distortion is employed in depicting the grass and the ground in the foreground, and the trees in the background to serve  aesthetic ends and to intensify a feeling for rhythmic form, which will be more apparent in Botong’s works in the 1950s  onwards.  The warm hues and graceful curves of the central trees, and plume-like depiction of the trees in the background, blends with the distant forms of the two farmers.  The faraway haystack and the cold blue gray majesty of the mountain range beyond.  Carlos Botong Francisco belonged to the first generation modernists who, with Edades and Galo B. Ocampo, constituted the pioneering triumvirate which attempted to change the direction of Philippine art from the tenacious influence of the Amorsolo School in new and fresh idioms of visual expression. It should be recalled that Edades, the head of the triumvirate, saw for himself the travelling exhibit of the Armory show back in 1922, which opened his eyes to the ferment caused by Gauguin, Cezanne and Matisse. On the other hand, Botong, in the words of Emmanuel Torres : “like H.R. Ocampo…turned down invitations to go abroad on study and travel grants, preferring to study Gauguin through color reproductions rather than the originals hanging in foreign museums.”  In Angono, Botong refined the style he had made his own, his personal version of Post Modernism (Gauguin mostly) grafted onto the Philippine context: a highly attractive pictorialism where lines flow in long, sweeping gestures and rhythms, where the eye is seduced at every turn by graceful arcs and curves.   His flowing, curvilinear lines which depict the trees and the grass anticipate his dynamic future murals in the 1950s.  Emmanuel Torres writes that the basis of Botong’s style is “…a successful blending of formal elements in folk art…the happy result of his researches on the art traditions which have taken root in the collective Filipino psyche.  His art has shown the way toward the development of a distinct national idiom, based not on Philippine subject matter as such, but on the formal qualities reflecting an artist’s particular way of looking at things as conditioned by environment and tradition.”","lot_group":"Painting","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Carlos &ldquo;Botong&rdquo; Francisco</strong> (1912-1969)<br /><em>Landscape</em><br />signed and dated 1944 (lower left)<br />oil on board<br />19&rdquo; x 25&rdquo; (48 cm x 64 cm)</p>","alias":null,"hp":5500000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":5500000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":6424000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":39273,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/63/91/lot/152.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":151,"next":153,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}