{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":46072,"auction_id":93,"set_id":122,"lot_number":"113","artist":"Vicente Manansala (1910 - 1981)","title":"Two Women, Banff","starting_price":1000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1948 (upper left)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"11 1/2\" x 15 1/2\" (30 cm x 39 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM THE DON J. ANTONIO ARANETA COLLECTION","coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Manansala’s First Brush With Cubism: A Felicitous Encounter in the Canadian Rockies
\nBy the time the Philippines ushered into the 1940s, Vicente \nManansala was still finding his creative footing. Although by \nthen among the legendary “Thirteen Moderns,” Manansala \nfound painting to be a mere “skillful transposition of reality on a \npiece of paper or canvas,” as Rod. Paras-Perez puts it in his book \nManansala. At that time, Manansala had been working as an \nillustrator for the Herald.
\nIn the years immediately after the Second World War, Manansala, \nwho had been living in the slums of Reina Regente in Binondo, \njoined the nascent Art Association of the Philippines, founded \non 15 February 1948 by its matriarch, Purita Kalaw-Ledesma. \nManansala would become active in the organization, joining its \n“First National Art Exhibition” on 3 July 1948 and eventually \nbagging the 3rd prize for his oil on canvas work “Banaklaut \n(Boatmen),” following the respective 1st and 2nd prizes nods of \nBotong Francisco for “Kaingin” and Demetrio Diego for “Capas.”\nThe AAP would also bestow Manansala an honorable mention for \n“I Believe in God.”
\nManansala would find artistic inspiration from Botong. In Cid \nReyes’ “Conversations on Philippine Art,” Manansala says he has \ndeep admiration and high regard for the Angono master’s virtuoso. \nHe would then admit that Botong’s influence on his early works \nspilled onto his style and even to the point of capturing the master’s \nartistic feeling: folk, solemn, and possessing delicate elegance and \nrhythm. Manansala even shared that he mistakenly attributed his \nown 1948 work “I Believe in God” (now displayed in the National \nMuseum) to Botong’s when he saw it in “The Manila Times” one \nday in April 1971.
\nIn June 1949, Manansala, who had been working as a staff artist \nfor Ramon Roces Publications and the “Evening News,” won a six_x0002_month UNESCO Art Fellowship to Canada through the Canadian \nCouncil for Reconstruction, a fellowship program for artists from \nwar-ravaged countries. Manansala’s win came as a result of his \ntriumphs at the AAP and at a 1949 art competition organized by \nthe Philippine National Red Cross, in which his design of the Red \nCross as a lifesaver landed the second prize and was subsequently \nreproduced on two million copies of 4-plus-4 denomination semi_x0002_postal Red Cross stamps.
\nWith his major feat, the AAP honored Manansala with a banquet \nat the Selecta Restaurant along Dewey (Roxas) Boulevard on June \n18 and left for Canada the following day. Manansala, notes Roces, \nwas the sole Filipino painter to be awarded the grant and was to \nenroll at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Banff located in Alberta, \n4,500 feet high up on the Canadian Rockies. Manansala’s grant \nincluded free passage, a monthly allowance of $180, and $300 for \ntraveling expenses.
\nOwing to its idyllic environment, the arts center and leisurely \ncapital that is Banff possessed a stimulating atmosphere for \nhoning one’s virtuoso; students and artists loved Banff for the \ncreative liberty it endowed them. Manansala first studied under \nan instructor with whom he would have disputes. Roces succinctly \nnarrates, “An instructor with academic inclinations saw one of \nManansala’s first classroom works and noted that the painting \nwould be all right if the colors were changed. Manansala thought \notherwise. He was convinced that color was what lent individually \nto a painting. His retort was brief: “I’ll change you first before I’ll \nchange my colors!””
\nEventually, Manansala moved to Joseph “Joe” Plaskett’s class. \nManansala and Plaskett would quickly form a brotherhood built \non creative camaraderie. (They even shared the same dorm room!) \nManansala would join Plaskett on trekking and hiking excursions \nto hilltops, cliffs, and riverbanks overlooking the breathtaking \nCanadian Rockies to sketch landscapes. In one of those leisurely \nexcursions (or even on Plaskett’s after-class sessions), the Canadian \nmentor-artist would formally introduce Manansala to the tenets \nof Cubism.
\nManansala would shed his Botong impulses and take on the road \nless traveled by his fellow artists in the motherland.
\nRoces writes, “Plaskett showed Manansala a portrait fragmented \ninto strips, which he was working on. Explaining that painting \nwas primarily a question of manipulating space, Plaskett shifted \nthe strips around, creating in the process an intensely active \nplanar surface, a surface where each shape appeared to push or \npull other shapes.”
\nAlthough he worked mainly in a Post-Impressionist and Abstract \nExpressionist visual language, Plaskett possessed an affinity with \nCubism. He once said, “Cubism came about because, in the process \nof analyzing form, something that lay in the form, a plane could be \nlifted out to float on its own.”
\nLike a visionary reveling in the peace and quiet of Banff, Manansala \nsaw the dawn of ingenuity with Plaskett’s artistic guidance. \nManansala would take inspiration from this process, resulting \nin works that would become his first serious foray into Cubism, \nincluding this 1949 work at hand titled Two Women, Banff—the \nearliest Manansala cubist masterpiece to be offered at auction.\nThe work depicts two women inspired by Manansala’s female \nclassmates/acquaintances at Banff. They are shown in the height \nof their wonder, awe, and heedfulness, probably in sketching a \nsweeping vista of the picturesque Canadian Rockies or keenly \nlistening to a mentor’s lectures. Manansala likely produced this \nwork in one of his laidback periods of serenity and spontaneity. \nDid Manansala paint this in one of his painting classes? In an \nimpromptu painting session at Banff’s great outdoors with his \nclassmates as a form of creative relaxation? Or even in the quietude \nof his room while being guided by Plaskett? The answer’s left to the \nviewer’s fancy.
\nIn this painting, we see broad and overlapping planes of geometric \nforms, which are emphasized by a muted palette. Manansala endows \nthe space with a delicate tension emphasized through the shunning \nof depth, effectively merging the foreground and background and \nresulting in solidity and flatness outlining the abstracted images \nof two women. Much like his Botong-inspired works, Manansala \nemploys desaturated colors.
\nBefore his Canadian sojourn, Manansala’s works had already \nexhibited Cubistic tendencies, albeit muted, as evidenced by the \nblocky nature of his Botong-inspired works. But Manansala’s study \ngrant to Canada would act as a light to find his own virtuoso, \nculminating in his career-defining Transparent Cubism, his \nshining legacy to Filipino art. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":1600000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":1600000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":0,"hammer_price":1922560,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":45446,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/93/122/lot/113.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[900000,1000000,1100000,1200000,1300000,1400000,1500000,1600000,1700000,1800000,1900000,2000000,2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":112,"next":114,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}