Provenance: León Gallery, Kingly Treasures Auction, Makati City, 29 November 2014, lot 95 Acquired from the above by the present owner

ABOUT THE WORK

Danilo Dalena mainly established his name during the early seventies with his brilliant and caustic political cartoons and illustrations for the Free Press Philippine Leader which gave a new life to editorial cartooning and brought out new potentials to the field of Philippine graphic arts. His career became more pronounced upon the creation of his famous Jai Alai series which placed him high on the roster of AAP winners and won for him the Mobil Art Grand Award for painting in 1980. The Jai Alai series in oil on canvas was a culmination of the figure drawings now rendered in paintings of epic perspective on the subject of swarming masses in search of luck or miraculous relief. Done during the Martial law years, the crowded betting halls in this series served as a metaphor for the ensuing human condition, particularly the Philippine society crisis. The game, like an arbitrary throw of dice with its winning combination of numbers and mesmerizes and provokes in the crowds of the oppressed and unemployed a temporary heightened existence compounded by hope and despair, by jubilation and drunken despondency. Eschewed of gaudy strokes of the desperate, echoing ghoulish shadows of uncertainty, Dalena viewed Jai Alai frontons as cathedrals of faith and fate. He dwelt into the Filipino psyche by inducing game metaphors of llamado and dejado. Instead of depicting triumphs, he condoled more with defeat and despair of the human spirit. Done in earth tones of brown, green and oranges, Dalena’s Bodies are lush and fleshy, less concerned with depictions of ideal physicality and environments, focusing more on immortalizing what he sees as he sees them.