This piece is accompanied by a certificate issued by Finale Art File confirming the authenticity of this lot

Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

Ang Kiukok’s compelling crucifixions take their place in the forefront of modern art. In this Crucifixion, Christ has the duality of tortured victim and an alienated public figure. The formal balance, as brought by the centrality of the cross and the cruciform composition of the limbs, imbues a spiritual restraint to an otherwise raging theme. The image of the crucified Christ here is presumed to be naked, adding to the emotional severity of the moment, although Ang Kiukok reduces his images of Christ to bring out only the most elemental forms, his works nevertheless ably achieves emotional power within the context of a contemporary art idiom Ang Kiukok did not create elaborate settings for his figures, but allowed simple, powerful gestures to create the impact. Jesus’ downward gaze, not a hint of his face is shown, adds to the holy pathos. In hte artist’s Crucifixions the Christ figure is a rack of fat spikes, thorns and bones sticking out of a ribcage like tusks, Expressionist frenzy now combined with a dose of surrealist nightmare. Writing on the subject Henry Clifford has said, “In the earliest crosses, the figure of Christ is straight and erect, placed symmetrically along the center line of the cross, with the eyes wide open and neither face nor body giving any indication of pain. As time goes on, the headg radually droops, and the body starts to bend slightly to the left, under the weight of suffering.” With all profundity and mystery, it is one of the more poetical and sublime pictures of Christ as depicted by Ang Kiukok. One of the most purely poetical pictures of sympathy he ever produced. The black, solidly built cross is monumental in itself. The blood red street is a foreboding of what is to come. The formal balance as brought by the vertical presence of the cross imbues a lofty spiritual restraint to an otherwise melancholy theme. This image has a more self contained, meditative feel about it. Artists such as Ang Kiukok adhered to the classical Cubism of Picasso and Braque and their early compatriots Juan Gris and Leger, but, as would be expected, the emphases diverged and diversified after the idea crossed the Pacific, becoming a hybrid of European aesthetics and Filipino secular or powerful religious themes. Ang Kiukok’s depiction of the suffering Christ took a tortuous evolution all its own. In a June 1974 article, Eric Torres wrote: “A more notable transmutation occurs in the large Crucifixions. No longer have the serene, static crucified Christs of the fifties and sixties, these al ter ones written with Grunewaldian anguish. Like the Crucifixions, the color stresses are morose blues and reds, which heighten the phantasmagoric character of these.” With its mood of desolation, the details notwithstanding, we see an uncompromisingly austere view of the Crucifixion as the artist sees it.