Provenance: Joe and Nene Guevarra

ABOUT THE WORK

Ocampo concentrated on the plastic elements of painting: thus, color and form became his subjects. The nude figure of a woman can barely be discerned through the biomorphic shapes. It is characteristic of his abstractions of interlocking shapes, here forming an exceedingly tight configuration. It displays his strongest suite: his rich palette of reds, a wide range of them, from yellow crimsons to purples. Red accounts for much of the sensuous aspect of his female form, for Ocampo it signifies the life force itself. The sectionalized flame-like motif which has become his hallmark suggests here a never ending inflorescence only temporarily delimited by the picture frame. As the artist once wrote: “I am more interested in how shapes, hues, values, textures and lines interact with one another in space, than in capturing a photographic semblance of nature.”Hernando R Ocampo was extraordinary because his Filipinism was formulated through abstract and nonobjective ideas. By the use of dynamic colors and dematerialized forms. Ocampo has reenergized Philippine abstraction.