{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":40504,"auction_id":64,"set_id":92,"lot_number":"162","artist":"Benedicto Cabrera (b. 1942)","title":"Sabel","starting_price":8000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 2003 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"96” x 72” (244 cm x 183 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private Collection, Makati City","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Eminent art critic Cid Reyes asked Bencab: …The figure of a mad woman you have named Sabel appears…quite a number of them in various poses, arrangements and views.  Is she a fictional character?”\nBencb answered: “No, not at all.  Sabel is- or was, I was told she died in 1972- a real, flesh and blood person.  I used to see her in the streets of Bambang, scavenging around garbage cans.  I used to be fascinated by her; I did a lot of on the spot drawings and sketches of her.  I also used to take photographs of her.”\nCid Reyes added: “What so fascinated you about her?” Ben Cab answered: “I thought she made a terrific image visually.  I thought she made a terrific subject matter for my paintings. She used to gather these plastic sheets and wrap them around her body.  They made the most beautiful abstract shapes.”\n \nSabel, in the eyes and brush of Bencab, has gone through many ethereal manifestations in the virtual half century that has passed.\n \nOne might say that the Sabel series, began in 1966 in the ink medium, constitutes the quintessential Ben Cabrera.  The figure of Sabel is the contemporary reincarnation in the visual arts of the hapless character of Sisa in Rizal’s novel, Noli me Tangere, where she becomes a wandering and witless vagrant after the loss of her sons.\nHaving entered Bencab’s anxious dreams, she flitted in and out of his art for years-her fluid presence evading strict definition.\n \nThus, she first appears in the 1966 Sabel series as an indistinct figure caught between the light and dark tones of the ink  medium.\n \nA series of paintings in the 1970s period showed the process of her etherealization into abstraction.\nIn 1981, he painted the touching Sabel in Grief, gathering her blouse to conceal her crumpled face filled with tears in an  expression of irretrievable loss.\nThe first metamorphosis of Sabel was the Japanese girl in Edo Gesture 1 (1981).  Sabel’s sorry couture made of plastic rags of various lengths has been transformed into the ritualistic Japanese woman’s kimono.\n \nIn 2002, he resumed the theme of draperies with an exceptional painting entitled “Woman in White,” which might as well be another manifestation of his famous wandering madwoman.  This “Sabel/Woman in White” appears a year later, in 2003.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Benedicto Cabrera</strong> (b.1942)<br /><em>Sabel</em><br />signed and dated 2003 (lower right)<br />oil on canvas<br />96&rdquo; x 72&rdquo; (244 cm x 183 cm)</p>","alias":"bencab","hp":40000000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":40000000,"userBid":null,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":46720000,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":39582,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/64/92/lot/162.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[],"prev":161,"next":163,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}