{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":47401,"auction_id":95,"set_id":125,"lot_number":"155","artist":"Betsy Westendorp (1927 - 2022)","title":"1272 (Atmosferografias Series)","starting_price":2400000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 2011 (lower left)","medium":"acrylic on canvas
","size":"78\" x 69\" (198 cm x 175 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":"Private collection, Manila","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Betsy Westendorp’s atmosferografias, or paintings of the atmosphere, are her philosophical-cumartistic inquiry and exploration into the sublime transcendence and otherworldliness of the vast celestial space. They are \"portraits of the spirit,\" if one may deem it. Westendorp’s love affair with the heavens started in Manila—the Pearl of the Orient overlooking a historic bay known for being the mise en scene of a majestic sunset.
In the early 1950s, Westendorp and her husband, Tony, lived at the Ramona Apartment along Dakota Street (now M. Adriatico). “At five o’clock, my husband, Tony, came home from San Miguel,” shares Westendorp in a conversation with art critic Cid Reyes. “Their offices were near Malacañang, in Arlegui. He would pick me up and go to Manila Bay. Take a stroll…enjoy the view and the sunset.”
However, Westendorp would only start painting the celestial atmosphere in the 1970s and would continue to do so even after her husband died in 1976, likely a visual eulogy to her departed other half, an allusion to his metamorphosis from the physical world to the spiritual realm. Westendorp would also progress from the Manila Bay atmosferografias to the more hallowed ones— metaphysical inquiries cutting across space and time.
It was the Spanish art critic and Westendorp’s dear friend, Elena Flórez, who would christen Westendorp’s sky paintings as “atmosferografias” after a laborious scanning of many Spanish dictionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries. “The manner she interprets it, the originality of the theme, and the absence of previous references moved me to search for the proper explanation so as to bring it to these pages with the purpose of delving into the matter,” Flórez writes in a critique of Westendorp’s works.
The monumentality of Westendorp’s atmosferografias evokes an artist’s romantic journey into the spiritual. In these paintings, Westendorp has not only emancipated her emotions but the totality of her being as well.
Immersed in an overwhelming, seemingly infinite space, any viewer of Westendorp’s atmosferografias is palpably transported into the sublime, a world so vast and transcendent that all possibilities seem unbounded. As one drifts from one billow of cloud to another and explores the contrasts of heavenly light made possible by the artist's refinement in color, the theatricality of the cosmos takes center stage, and Westendorp’s palette of emotions becomes an earnest revelatory experience.
Furthermore, there is an infinite horizon not captured on Westendorp’s canvas, giving visual authority to the viewer on how far they would go to expand their creative horizons and go beyond mere orthodox thinking. Just like the lushness of her trademark floral gardens that evoke beauty in impermanence, Westendorp’s celestial coliseum, engulfed in all its rapturous beauty, offers a cosmic balsam for the lost and wounded soul. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"Painting","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":0,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":0,"userBid":5930,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"UNSOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":0,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":46912,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/95/125/lot/155.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[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":154,"next":156,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}