Provenance:
Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

In the monumental survey of the art of Anita Magsaysay Ho, she gives voice to the origins of this series of paintings, known in art circles as ‘the inkblot period.’ Speaking to the scholar Alfredo Roces, she says “While living in Montreal, I started to paint but felt empty of ideas. One day, I threw ink on the canvas and dropped water on it. All of a sudden, I saw shapes and forms that inspired me. I saw the inkblots as rocks, stones, tree trunks and driftwood.” “I learned the technique from an old Jewish lady while we were in Tokyo. She did it on paper and left the ink blots as they were. I decided to add women, nets, and other objects to make more interesting and colorful compositions,” she explained. It was a masterstroke that only this visionary modernist could produce. Anita would furthermore confide to Alfredo Roces, “I can say that this is my style of painting that would be difficult, if not impossible to duplicate.” In the work at hand, titled “Women Feeding Chickens”, the inkblots suggest seashells and clams, alluding to Filipina Venuses rising from the ocean; this time, to do their duties, dressed in traditional patadyong (skirts) the colors of gold and celadon. Anita was famous throughout her career for her affection for the hardworking Filipino woman. And in this enchanting masterpiece, farm wives expertly wield the circular wooden baskets called ‘bilao’; some raising it over the heads, others holding them low to the ground, the better to feed the gathering hens. They are surrounded by undulating forms, part waves, part clouds perhaps, seemingly carrying the female figures aloft and giving the painting a sense of intimacy as well as dynamism. It is an entirely soothing composition that could only have been carefully created by one of the most razor-sharp intellects of the time. No wonder she would often be described as ‘the female Amorsolo’ for consistently delivering beautiful works full of happy women and nature’s bounty. Anita Magsaysay Ho established this reputation early on by taking the grand prize in just the 5th year of the influential competition organized by the Art Association of the Philippines in 1952. (Arturo Luz would take first prize with ‘Bagong Taon’ in the modern category. that same year.) In an interview of the time, she would declare herself “modern but not abstract” — and that “one can only learn true art by studying the basic principles set down by the classicists.” The painter can go from there but not until then, she emphasized. Magsaysay Ho would become not just ‘the most important female artist in the Philippines’ but arguably the best the country had to offer in the 20th century, regardless of gender.