{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":47312,"auction_id":95,"set_id":125,"lot_number":"64","artist":"Benedicto Cabrera (b. 1942)","title":"Refugees","starting_price":1800000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1974 (lower left)","medium":"acrylic on paper","size":"18 1/2\" x 14\" (47 cm x 36 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private collection, Manila","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"In 1974, two years after Bencab debuted his homecoming, career-defining, and coming-of-age exhibition of his iconic Larawan Series at The Luz Gallery, the artist returned to London, where he had previously settled in 1969 and had met his then-wife, Caroline Kennedy. Back in the British capital, Bencab enrolled at the Camden Arts Centre, where he pursued special studies in sculpture and life drawing.

That same year, Bencab produced works imbued with formidable critiques against the socio-political landscape of his home country, then in its second year of martial rule. In this work titled Refugees, we are greeted by a sepia-toned image of a family, with the patriarch leading his kin and the entire household carrying their scanty valuables. There is an immediate aura of vulnerability and anguish that are heightened by the subjects’ facial expressions: fatigued, agonized, and poverty-stricken.

Many of Bencab’s works in his Larawan series dealt with the tragic history of the Philippine–American War of 1899 to 1902 (although several groups, including the Moro people, continued the battle against the Americans until they were defeated at the Battle of Bud Bagsak in 1913). The Philippine–American War saw America solidifying its position as the most formidable imperial power at the turn of the century, with its presidents of that period, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, being prominently vocal on their expansionist policies. The war traces its roots to the expansionist policies of the US; it saw the Philippines as a springboard to the lucrative Chinese trade and an “tool” to serve and patronize American business and enterprise.

In relation to the brutalities of the said war, there exists primary accounts, mainly from American soldiers whose letters were published by the Anti-Imperialist League (which counted among its members the influential writer Mark Twain) in its 1899 pamphlet “Soldiers’ Letters Being Materials For the History of a War of Criminal Aggression,” which the League used in challenging America’s imperialistic carnage.

Guy Williams of the Iowa Regiment writes: “The soldiers made short work of the whole thing. They looted every house and found almost everything, from a pair of shoes up to a piano, and they carried everything off or destroyed it.”

Captain Elliot of the Kansas Regiment reveals: “Caloocan was supposed to contain seventeen thousand inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native.”

Anthony Michea of the Third Artillery harrowingly retells: “We bombarded a place called Malabon, and then we went in and killed every native we met: men, women, and children.”

There was also the infamous order of Brig. Gen. Jacob Smith to make Balangiga in Samar “a howling wilderness.” He ordered: “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn: the more you kill and burn, the better you will please me.”

In these accounts, one may have a profound insight into how the Filipino masses struggled to run for survival by fleeing from their original pueblo or barrio and settling in a secluded environment, away from the hostilities and bloodshed propagated by the US forces. And this is what Bencab distressingly portrays.

Bencab once said in an April 1978 interview with Cid Reyes and published in Conversations on Philippine Art that the idea behind the Larawan “was to make our colonial past reflect on our present.” As a series of works created at a most harrowing period in our country’s recent history, the Larawan Series acts as a mirror in which the present is seen as a continuing past.

When liberties were curtailed in the 70s, many Filipinos sought refuge in the masses’ arms, where they lived in solidarity and organized and mobilized the broad range of the oppressed peoples against an authoritarian state; many even went underground and engaged in armed resistance.

Much as the Philippine-American War is seen as a continuation of the Filipino struggle for genuine sovereignty at the turn of the century, but this time against a new colonizer, Bencab’s Larawan evokes an unfinished revolution. A sustained resistance. A protracted struggle. A never-ending yearning for genuine national sovereignty and democracy against the roots of the Philippines’ continuing oppression and subjugation. That we must never again let our people be so acquiescent amid brutal imperial powers.

While the figures in the work at hand portray passive anguish and the diaspora brought by war, perhaps Bencab galvanizes us—the Filipinos of the present—to confront these societal ills and not just disregard them, an ill-fated situation that would only deliver us to the tribulations of servility and subservience masquerading as illusory refuge. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"Painting","lot_details_html":null,"alias":"bencab","hp":2000000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":2000000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":2403200,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":46999,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/95/125/lot/64.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":63,"next":65,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}