Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

The fact that the subject seems to be devouring something that covers his face — is it food or some kind of sustenance? — gives hints of Goya’s disturbing “Saturn”, except that the figure is a social outcast, not some pagan god. This gaunt figure, executed in pastel on paper, shows BenCab’s Scavenger at its most haunting countenance: reduced to an almost ghostly form. In 1970 Bencab started his scavenger Series of etchings, whose imagery of city destitute originated during the late sixties when he worked as an illustrator for the Manila Times. As can be seen in this scavenger, BenCab’s inclination to “abstract” comes to the fore with only the barest suggestion of the human torso. Bencab has always been sensitive about social injustices inflicted on the weak and helpless, giving poignant meaning to what would be merely hauntingly depicted pictures. BenCab’s paintings in the early to mid1960s already show the process of etherealization of subject almost into abstraction A fine early representative work of his earliest years as an artist, “worker” hints at understated forms, nervous outlines, sharp contrasts, and emotional content of Ben Cabrera’s mature style to come.