PROPERTY FROM THE VICENTE LOPEZ JR. COLLECTION

ABOUT THE WORK

Troubled visionary Lee Aguinaldo was as cosmopolitan as his background. Born in New York in 1933 to the logging tycoon Daniel R. Aguinaldo and his Russian-American wife, Lee quickly became the ‘bad boy’ of Philippine Art After an early flirtation with a style motivated by Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, Aguinaldo quickly struck out on his own, thanks to the tutelage of the likes of Fernando Zobel who critiqued and guided his works, especially Lee’s most famous series dubbed the Linears. His being entirely self-taught did not deter him from having his first solo show at the legendary Philippine Art Gallery (PAG) in 1956 at the ripe old age of 23. By the start of the 1970s, he would have had eight other shows in the Philippines according to the Duldulao tome Contemporary Art in the Philippines (published by Vera-Reyes Inc. in 1972.) More importantly, he would become familiar with the international sophistication to be learned at various expositions and exhibitions in London, Rome, and at the Seattle’s World Fair, the Tel Aviv International Fair, as well as tours of Philippine art to Australia and Japan where his works would be included. This particular piece is among the earliest of his iconic Linear paintings and indicates his particular attack to the problem of space posed by the polished window-like square that was its signature. Lee used geometric divisions rather than his more well-known use of color to bifurcate the planes. It is thus one of a handful of Aguinaldo paintings that are in austere black, white and grey. Covered with ravishingly subtle gradations, Linear No. 13 also features a unique schemata. In the center is a crystal structure. Aguinaldo was an omnivorous reader by all accounts and it would have been no surprise that the mysterious form would represent a unit cell, the smallest unit of volume that permits identical cells to be stacked together to fill all space. It is something that his curiously disciplined mind would have found fascinating. (Lisa Guerrero Nakpil)