Provenance: Philippine Art Gallery, Manila

Exhibited: Philippine Art Gallery, November 30 - December 10, 1957

ABOUT THE WORK

Two Women, One Painting by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL The hubbub of marketplaces would have a special resonance for Anita Magsaysay-Ho. They would also bring her prizes and national attention. In 1952, Magsaysay-Ho would be declared not only the best artist in the country by the all-powerful Art Association of the Philippines, but also the first woman artist to be declared so for The Cooks. It depicted a bevy of women stirring up a rich chicken soup, captured in action as they each contributed to the pot, and was simply delightful. A well-publicized fight even broke out over it and serendipitously, the winning buyer happened to be a wealthy market vendor herself who came from Tabora Street in Divisoria. Magsaysay-Ho would hold the art scene in thrall through the years with one riveting market scene after another : winning notice for Fish Vendors at the next semi-annual AAP competition, followed shortly by another triumph for Fruit Vendors, tail-gating the highly respected Fernando Zóbel the following year for top honors. For Betty Anderson, an American housewife living on Basilan Island in the Sulu Archipelago, the rhythms of Filipino life, as defined by the fruit vendors, fish hawkers, coral and shell sellers were of great import. Life Magazine would in fact capture Mrs. Anderson shopping in a Mindanao fruit market in 1951 and it looks straight out of the Magsaysay-Ho painting — festooned in hanging bananas and pineapples, capturing the hardworking fruit seller in action. Fruit Market is in the golden hues of an idealized world, the tawny skin tones of the women drawing in the eye of the viewer to the various attitudes of the women as they muse and meditate on the qualities of the fruits. There Two Women, One Painting by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL are mangos, green and ripe, plantains and all manner of bananas. Magsaysay-Ho’s women are always intent and absorbed in their world that is filled almost to the brim pictorially with the scents and sounds of the marketplace. The artwork was exhibited in the last solo show of the year of the Philippine Art Gallery as detailed in the all-important tag, taking place from November 30th to December 10th, 1957 and it can easily be imagined that Mrs. Anderson and her husband, the busy proprietor of Basilan Lumber had traveled to Manila for a bit of Christmas shopping in the country’s leading gallery, the PAG. It certainly represents two women’s shared preoccupations, both comforting and authentic. It would be part of an important milestone for Anita Magsaysay Ho: Her third solo exhibition at the PAG which happened to be at its new address on Arquiza corner M.H. del Pilar Streets in Malate.