{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":50114,"auction_id":99,"set_id":131,"lot_number":"26","artist":"Ang Kiukok (1931 - 2005)","title":"Window","starting_price":2800000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1979 (lower right)","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"24\" x 24\" (61 cm x 61 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM THE SENATOR LETICIA RAMOS SHAHANI COLLECTION","coa":"Accompanied by a certificate issued by \nFinale Art File confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"White Window, Black Sun, Red Day by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL
\n\nBorn in Davao City to Chinese immigrants, Ang Kiukok was christened with a bright, shiny, and optimistic name which, in English, meant ‘Save the Country.’ When he was 21, he would come to Manila and enroll in the University of Santo Tomas College of Architecture and Fine Arts where he would meet his life- long mentor and friend, Vicente Manansala.
There was always something high-minded and yes, visionary, about him : An astonishing entry in his biography details that in 1956, he “stayed in Sulu for five years to teach art to children of Chinese descent.” He would, however, come to Manila and forge bonds and mount exhibits at the legendary Philippine Art Gallery, the country’s first outpost for abstract art.
In 1976, his biography further notes, he “appeared on the cover of Asiaweek Magazine, with a cover story that described him as a mild-mannered expressionist — “tall, angular, reticent” — living in Quezon City with his wife, four children, three dogs and flowering plants.” Many of these motifs, the mothers cradling babies, energetic dogs, prickly plants and yes, the open windows of an urban home would find themselves into his paintings.
This particular ‘Window’ from that eponymous series is outstanding, using a combination of stark color and striking shapes to create the view from beyond the house shutters thrown wide. Looking outward, one views a black sun on a red plain, the white sill making it appear dangerously close. The entire vista is outlined in scarlet, letting off an energy like a match about to be struck and burst into flames.
Art critic Carlomar Daoana would put it this way, “While his contemporaries interpreted Cubism in a lyrical style through an evocative overlapping of shapes and colors, the master brought it to an acutely sharp level, injecting it with a masculine energy. In breaking the subject matter into planar and geometric shapes, Ang Kiukok not so much simplified as he compressed, giving his subjects visual dominance and existential gravitas.”
It is perhaps that sense of seriousness and other- worldliness that must have resonated with the good Senator Ramos Shahani, who was an enthusiastic supporter of Philippine art through the decades.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Ang Kiukok (1931 - 2005) Window signed and dated 1979 (lower right) oil on canvas 24\" x 24\" (61 cm x 61 cm)