{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":50227,"auction_id":99,"set_id":131,"lot_number":"138","artist":"Federico Aguilar-Alcuaz (1932 - 2011)","title":"Barcelona Series","starting_price":1400000,"signed_dated":"ca. 1960","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"26\" x 32\" (66 cm x 81 cm)","property":null,"coa":"León Gallery wishes to thank Mr. Christian Aguilar for confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist Private Collection, Manila","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, in the words of Alice Guillermo, is an “abstract artist of the highest order.” And deservingly so: the artist has garnered awards and acclaim for his art here and abroad. His hedonistic life as a bon vivant is reflected dramatically in his works: unbridled energy, sophistication, and the ability to harness the qualities of the medium come to the fore in his canvas. The era that was the sixties in the life and career of Alcuaz was one marked by international recognition and awards. As an artist, he excelled in portraits, landscapes, still-life, and abstracts, which this brooding and highly emotional piece exemplifies. This work is a visual focus, no doubt intense and frenetic.
Alcuaz has drawn inspiration from a wide variety of sources, from his early years in the Philippines to his long stay in Europe, resulting in an art that is universal in nature. Alcuaz wields a powerful brush. Often in Alcuaz’s work, there is this sense that we are looking at the tempestuous aesthetics and hedonism of Spain and the rest of Europe. The viewer can imagine that as the artist executed his strokes and applied his solid colors, there was this sense of serendipity that revealed a kind of “dancing” poetry driven by sheer energy. Alcuaz painted rapidly, a stirring of imagination that communicates to the viewer a pleasurable emotion.
As an artist who conforms to tradition, Federico Aguilar Alcuaz saw art as both a gift and a calling, something worth all the efforts as well as the pleasure of creation. The National Artist garnered great adulation and acclaim for his mode of abstraction which presents complex interplays of elements, disfiguring his subjects to the point where only their bare essence remains. Elegant and refined are his artistic tendencies, as his works exemplify a distinct European flair — a quality found in the works of very few Filipino artists. For Alcuaz, the quality of a piece of art has nothing to do with its being either abstract or figurative. Art, as language, can indicate either abstract or concrete images like a musical composition, which can be evocatively pastoral or highly atonal. And in both cases, equally excellent.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Federico Aguilar-Alcuaz (1932 - 2011) Barcelona Series ca. 1960 oil on canvas 26\" x 32\" (66 cm x 81 cm)