Provenance: Private Collection, Hong Kong

ABOUT THE WORK

Romulo Olazo welcomed the 1990s with eager anticipation for his silver anniversary in the Philippine art scene in 1994. The celebrated artist also ushered in the decade with the debut of his Permutation series, which his wife Patricia Tria Olazo describes in Romulo's personal chronology in the 2013 monograph on the artist, as "a linear interpretation" of his "well-known diaphanous forms characterized by clean, sharp, well-defined lines." Even as he progressed into another series at the dawn of the new decade, Olazo never abandoned the concept and essence of his Diaphanous series, even taking inspiration from it to form another dashing series that captured his distinct visual language of exploring both abstraction and figuration and his ingenious fusion of the two. The work at hand, Diaphanous B-LXLIX, created in 1990, captures Olazo in that moment of transition from one theme to another, yet still keeping hold of his quintessential subject that catapulted him to artistic distinction. As Cid Reyes writes in the book Romulo Olazo: "Romulo Olazo's Diaphanous works constitute an entire life production and, in the annals of contemporary Philippine art, are unequaled as a sustained meditation on a focused theme, using an unswerving, determined technique." Until his passing, Olazo showed his profound indebtedness to an ethereal spirit manifested in the sublimity of his Diaphanous works, which gracefully flowed like a visual orchestra for four decades in his prolific career. (A.M.)