Literature: Literature: Roces, Alfredo. Kiukok: Deconstructing Despair. Finale Art Gallery, 2000, Plate No. 286.

ABOUT THE WORK

Manansala and Luz were the Filipino artists who influenced Ang Kiukok’s craft from the start of his career. Morris Graves also influenced the rough stone textures of his works. Upon Ang’s return from his travel to New York with Vicente Manansala, he developed a new vivid expressionist style as he produced paintings with themes of agony, sorrow, and madness. This 1986 work exhibits the predatory status of a fish. Its bones are exposed and striking colors are used. Ang Kiukok’s animal subjects are usually rendered by the artist with a fierce appearance. Critics would note that his depictions of animals are extensions of his “placid and affable” and direct-to-the-point personality, also reminiscent of Mexican modernist Rufino Tamayo’s paintings of growling dogs and monster-like roosters.