This piece is accompanied by a certificate issued by Mr. Christian Aguilar confirming the authenticity of this lot

Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

As the famed Manileno painter Federico Aguilar Alcuaz applied his lines and colors, there is a sense of serendipity that reveals a kind of “dancing” poetry driven by sheer, swirling energy of the temperament of his other city, Barcelona. Federico Aguilar Alcuaz gave up law to choose a painting career in the postwar period. Aguilar Alcuaz resided in Europe during his developing years in the ‘60s and ‘70s. His abstractions extended from works on canvas to large, stunning tapestries. His ability to perceive the world through a complex prism of cultures resulted in an oeuvre that sepaks to a broad range of artistic and aesthetic sensibilities. In 1955, Federico Aguilar Alcuaz received a scholarship grant to study at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. His instructor soon noticed that he was very talented. He was asked to leave the university, as “they had nothing more to teach him”. So less than a year after his arrival in Madrid, he moved to Barcelona where he soon joined a group of artists, called “La Puñalada” - of which Antonio Tapies - who brought recognition to avant garde Spanish art by winning two top prizes at the Venice Biennale in 1958, was the most famous member, alongside Cuixart and Tharrats. Alcuaz came unconsciously under their influence. It was at this time that he started signing his paintings with Aguilar Alcuaz to distinguish himself from two other Aguilars who were also members of the Punalada Group. Aguilar Alcuaz started to hold exhibits at the highly prestigious Sala Direccion General, Museum of Comtemporary art in Madrid, having been the youngest then at 24 to have exhibited there. He also received several awards such as the first prize at the Premio Francisco Goya (1958) in Barcelona, where he met Don Benjamin Gayubar, who was his first and foremost sponsor and later became at one time the biggest collector of Aguilar Alcuaz’s works. Alice Guillermo wrote for Asian Art News in 2007: “Although based in Barcelona, Germany and Brno, Czechoslovakia for a very long time, Alcuaz had much in common with many other Filipino abstractionists of his generation. Because many of them shared a common background, the Escuela de Bellas Artes or Academia later transformed into the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, they could easily shed their academic training. Thus many of them developed a dualistic approach to art, doing both figurative and abstract works. This painting is a reminder of how engrossing his art was during his Spanish period. Crafted with facility and florid elegance, his art reflects the influence of the synthetic phase of cubism of the School of Paris, it is true, but with their own vividness of color and their own intense play of shapes.