{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":47287,"auction_id":95,"set_id":125,"lot_number":"37","artist":"Romulo Olazo (1934 - 2015)","title":"Luntian (Diaphanous Series)","starting_price":2600000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1974 (lower right)","medium":"oil on board","size":"40\" x 26\" (102 cm x 66 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"1974 marked a turning point in Romulo Olazo’s then-burgeoning five-year career as a professional artist (He had just started in 1969 through the art of printmaking, particularly woodcut, although he began much earlier, albeit in the field of advertising, in 1959.). Just two years prior, in 1972, Olazo was among the recipients of the inaugural edition of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award.<br /><br /> 1974 also marked Olazo’s transition from advertising to full- time painting; he resigned as executive art director of the Philippine Advertising Counselors, Inc.<br /><br /> However, the most important singular event—that watershed moment—in Olazo’s career also happened in 1974: the birth of the Diaphanous Series paintings, signaling Olazo’s artistic coming-of-age.<br /><br />The work at hand, titled Luntian, is one of Olazo’s earliest Diaphanous paintings. It comes from the same year when Olazo produced his first two Diaphanous paintings—the acrylic pieces Takip Silim and Bukang Liwayway, which he exhibited in June 1974 in the group show “Land of the Beautiful” at the Quad Gallery at the old Makati Commercial Center (now the Ayala Center).<br /><br />Olazo’s Diaphanous Series was born from his printmaking practices of serigraphy and collography, which the artist started to explore in the early 1970s when he was still at the Philippine Association of Printmakers. The celebrated art critic Alice Guillermo writes in her essay Romulo Olazo: A Life for Art that “the artist had his own press made and, thus, acquired a more intimate knowledge of the processes and materials.”<br /><br /> Deriving from his printmaking techniques, Olazo wedded his serigraphic approach of using painters’ oil pigments in tubes and applying them on stenciled patterns cut out from old newspapers with the collographic practice of layering until embossed images slowly appeared. When put on canvas, Olazo’s unique method resulted in a more translucent effect, delicate textures, airy tonal values, and specters of visual sublimities that exhibit a three-dimensional illusion.<br /><br />In its earlier stages, Olazo titled his Diaphanous paintings by giving them subtitles in parentheses, such as this work at hand’s title, until such time that his wife, Patricia, designed a system in which a serial number composed of letters and Roman/Hindu-Arabic numerals conveniently helped in cataloging Olazo’s myriad works in one particular series.<br /><br /> Olazo’s experience and experimentation in printmaking not only helped him seamlessly transition into painting but also propelled him to heights he had never before conquered and eventually established him into the annals of Philippine art history. And now, the Diaphanous Series has become Olazo’s most significant tangible legacy to Philippine art. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"Painting","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":4000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":4000000,"userBid":7390,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":4806400,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":46975,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/95/125/lot/37.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":36,"next":38,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}