ABOUT THE WORK

National Artist Jerry Elizalde Navarro has come to be known for his powerful use of color and intelligible figurative approach. The renowned modernist puts on display his technical proficiency, elegantly rendering his subjects with a graceful and potent vigor—be they figurative or abstract. This very work by Navarro is a bit of an oddity. Very rarely does one come across works by the iconic modernist, more so one of such distinct subject matter. In the piece, Navarro makes use of strong, definitive, impasto strokes, adding to the grit of the composition. The stylized oeuvre features Navarro’s palette, but in a very different light. With brilliant color and refined restraint, Navarro captures the abstracted scenery in a very masterful fashion—his keen eye for detail and penchant for color put forth. In appreciating Jerry Elizalde Navarro’s interpretation of our southern indigenous cultures, the viewer should recall the artist’s exposure to the art of a place farther south: Bali, in neighboring Indonesia. Jerry Elizalde Navarro became the first Filipino artist at the Yayasan Dharma Seni Museum Neka in Bali, Indonesia. Eventually, Navarro was touched by the island’s visual traditions and in that distinctly Balinese sensitivity to movement and form.