{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":50132,"auction_id":99,"set_id":131,"lot_number":"44","artist":"Arturo Luz (1926 - 2021)","title":"a) Juggler b) Cyclist c) Musician","starting_price":2000000,"signed_dated":"signed (lower left) and dated 2012 (verso)","medium":"acrylic on canvas","size":"36” x 24” (91 cm x 61 cm)","property":null,"coa":"Each piece is accompanied by a certificate issued by \nMs. Luisa Luz-Lansigan confirming the authenticity of this lot","provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"Themes of the festive first appeared in Luz’s oeuvre in the 1950s. In 1952, Luz won the first prize in the annual competition of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) with his piece titled Bagong Taon (1952). In his book on the artist, Cid Reyes describes the work as “a darkly celebratory image, the silhouetted figures of Mother and Child tooting horns are spindly stick figures, mere representations of human likeness.” Regarding this landmark piece, Luz recalls: “I don’t know at what point my figure became very linear. I was influenced by the cave paintings [of Lascaux and Altamira]. There, you will see a similarity with my stick figures.”<br /><br /> That same year, Luz produced another painting with the same title, albeit with an entirely different subject— cyclists. The work was inspired by a familiar yet amusing and playful Manila street scene, which Luz witnessed one day in 1952: four men riding a single, jam-packed bicycle. “The sight struck me as very Filipino,” Luz recalls. “In the painting, I added the tooting horn. I called it Bagong Taon. The painting had a sense of celebration, performance, joy of life. This was the granddaddy of them all.” Luz says. Bagong Taon would also inspire Luz’s works depicting musicians. <br /><br />Luz continued his artistic journey on the exuberant and festive throughout the 1950s and the 1960s until it came to a sudden halt in 1969 when the artist abandoned the vestiges of figuration and explored a non-objective, pure abstract visual language. It was not until the 1990s that Luz went into a full-circle trajectory. Themes of gaiety that characterized Luz’s art in the 1950s and 1960s went into a full-blown resurgence and transpired into three series: Celebration, Carnival Forms, and Forms of Amusement. <br /><br />Circus themes recurrently appeared in Luz’s work towards the last two decades of his artistic career, such as in the case of this 2012 triptych depicting a juggler, cyclist, and musician. Nonetheless, they reaffirm Luz’s confidence in his artistry and the totality of his creative process grounded in his crisp brand of geometric abstraction, for he had nothing more to prove over the course of his stellar and prolific seven-decade career. In these works, structured spontaneity whips up revelry into the canvases.<br /><br /> In 1997, Luz was conferred the National Artists Award. Its citation states: “From the ‘Carnival’ series of the late 1950s to the recent ‘Cyclist’ paintings, Luz produced works that elevated Filipino aesthetic vision to new heights of sophisticated simplicity.” (A.M.)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"<p><strong>Arturo Luz</strong> (1926 - 2021)<br /><em>a) Juggler</em><br />signed (lower left) and dated 2012 (verso)<br />acrylic on canvas<br />36&rdquo; x 24&rdquo; (91 cm x 61 cm)<br /><br /><em>b) Cyclist</em><br />signed (lower left) and dated 2012 (verso)<br />acrylic on canvas<br />36&rdquo; x 24&rdquo; (91 cm x 61 cm)<br /><br /><em>c) Musician</em><br />signed (lower right) and dated 2012 (verso)<br />acrylic on canvas<br />36&rdquo; x 24&rdquo; (91 cm x 61 cm)</p>","alias":null,"hp":4200000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":4200000,"userBid":5930,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":4905600,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":50210,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/99/131/lot/44.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":50214,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/99/131/lot/44a.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":50213,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/99/131/lot/44b.jpg","isFeatured":0},{"id":50212,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/99/131/lot/44c.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"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":43,"next":45,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}