Provenance:
León Gallery, The Spectacular Mid-Year Auction 2017,
Makati City, 10 June 2017, Lot 133

Exhibited: (Curator’s Note : We have the rare privilege of presenting an essay
by the renowned scholar and collector Ramon N. Villegas on this
very work by the mid-century modern, Nena Saguil.)

ABOUT THE WORK

Simplicia “Nena” Laconico Saguil (1914 - 1994) was a pioneering Filipino modern artist. In 2006 President Arroyo posthumously awarded Saguil a Presidential Medal of Merit. She was known as a feminist, a mystic and a recluse. She spoke of being a lonely child in a large family. Not wanting to attend Catholic school, as her conservative parents wished her to, Saguil instead studied art at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts where the artist Anita Magsaysay was a classmate. Saguil was awarded a certificate in painting in 1933. It was not surprising that after World War II, Saguil was able to complete her studies at the University of the Philippines. She found herself in the circle of Hernando R. Ocampo and his many artist friends. During this period Saguil became increasingly interested in modern art, and was attracted to the work of Pablo Picasso. She completed her Bachelors Degree in 1949, earning an Award of Excellence. Her works of this period include a satirical self portrait entitled |”Vanity” showing a woman preening before a mirror, a take-off on a work by Monet. She also produced a number of floral still lifes painted with a light, Impressionist touch. One of these, dated 1950, is in this exhibition. Saguil eschews traditional composition. Her flowers are strewn on a surface seemingly in disarray. She barely attempts to be botanically correct, but the blooms appear to include frangipani or plumeria, hibiscus, and lilies. Some colors and textures hint of languorous softness; some suggest robust resilience. In the language of flowers, plumeria symbolizes “waiting for love”; they lie beside what appear to be bluebells, which may symbolize humility and love. The hibiscus symbolizes “delicate beauty” and “perfect bride”. Interestingly, the orange lilies, which may symbolize “hatred” are sustained in a glass full of water. They are surrounded by a multitude of orange blooms rendered with slashed fiery impasto, which lie fuming beside an empty earthenware pot, which may allude to virginity and solitary life. We have no evidence that Saguil was conversant with the Victorian language of flowers. But was she subconsciously expressing the frustrations of her 36 years of life? She was not that successful in her relationships, and she maintained the myth that she was 10 years younger than she really was. Nevertheless, this still-life is evidence of her efforts to break from the academic mold and that in her art she lay in the full embrace of modernism. At the time this painting was done, around 1950, Saguil became active in the newly formed Philippine Art Gallery (P.A.G.) run by Lyd Arguilla, serving as a volunteer watching over the gallery. Saguil exhibited there and became associated with other notable Philippine modernists. In 1956 Saguil moved to Paris to further her studies at the Ecole des Artes Americaine. Her work often contains a sense of spirituality and religious feeling, in which she subsumed her earlier aspirations and desires. Her inner landscapes or “inscapes” represented her journey from the Material World to the Spiritual. But her later works lack the vibrant energy and intriguing contradictions of her early paintings.