PROPERTY FROM THE VICENTE LOPEZ JR. COLLECTION

Literature: Literature: De Jesus, Angel. H.R. Ocampo: The Artist as Filipino. Heritage Publishing, 1979, p. 115.

ABOUT THE WORK

In 1945, artist-writer H.R. Ocampo was detained for eight and a half months by the American CounterIntelligence Corps and was released in October. Ocampo said that his imprisonment made him more nationalistic and aware of the reasons behind the various injustices experienced by Filipinos such as poverty. It was also the same year when he lost his wife, Irene, while he was still incarcerated. This period in Ocampo’s life resulted in figurative painting. People going through hard times in everyday life, dancers in mysterious settings, and those doing dull work are some of the figures he depicted in his early works. This 1946 oil painting is one of Ocampo’s earliest representational and figurative paintings with featureless faces. The country’s foremost abstractionist and the Father of Philippine Modern Abstraction, National Artist H.R. Ocampo is celebrated as a master colorist with his utilization of tropical colors. Best known for his distinct interlocking shapes and eloquence in the language of color, it is of no doubt that Ocampo is a highly influential artist, may it be for his early figurative works or highly expressive nonobjective masterpieces of interacting shapes.