{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":50172,"auction_id":99,"set_id":131,"lot_number":"83","artist":"Vicente Manansala (1910 - 1981)","title":"Fish, Fruit and Bottles","starting_price":800000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1971 (upper left)","medium":"watercolor on paper","size":"21\"x28\"(53cmx71cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Acquired directly from the artist","exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"A table abundant in food and decor is often a measure of status as well as wealth. In art, such a setting is portrayed with a platter of fruits, a vase of flowers, or a bottle of wine neatly placed on a dressed table. Vicente Manansala, a noted name for his genius brand of cubism, adhered to the philosophy of Maximalism, the aesthetic of excess. As seen in this 1971 still life, the canvas is filled with floating objects that appear to overlap each other. His sense of order was based on letting his imagination take the lead and not the axially organized compositions or the carefully considered relationships seen in a lot of still life pieces.
Albeit a Maximalist, Manansala was a practical man when it came to depicting a still life, refusing to buy perishable food items only for the sake of painting. He used bold colors to infuse emotions into an artwork. As per Rodolfo Paras-Perez in his book titled Manansala, some scholars interpret this as a Filipino sensibility, “in Manansala’s case, the result was not always the gaiety of a fiesta; it could also be the intensity of the tension inherent in what is and what might be.”
Watercolor was a favorite medium of Manansala. For him, the beauty of watercolor is that it demands control. The unpredictability of watercolor is problematic for a lot of artists, except for Manansala who excelled in manipulating the medium, which he had been using since childhood. In fact, some of his best works are in watercolor. His pieces that employed washes created a diffused effect due to the great amount of water, allowing the colors to flow into each other more subtly. Manansala saw color as powerful and held that it worked in a subtle and indefinable manner.
In 1971, the year this piece was dated, Manansala received the Araw ng Maynila Patnubay ng Kalinangan Award. (P.I.R.)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Vicente Manansala (1910 - 1981) Fish, Fruit and Bottles signed and dated 1971 (upper left) watercolor on paper 21\" x 28\" (53 cm x 71 cm)