Provenance: Philippine Art Gallery (PAG) Inez Moser, thence by descent

Literature: Literature: De Jesus, Angel G., H.R.Ocampo: The Artist As Filipino, Heritage Publishing, Philippines, 1979, fig. 314, p.158 (illustrated)

ABOUT THE WORK

As a young man in prewar Manila, Ocampo’s first paintings were literary in that they had a message to tell. Some of his early paintings even showed proletarian themes. In the 1950s, Ocampo’s paintings gradually reflected this kind of conviction by purging themselves of realist matter and literary cum literal allusion altogether. His 360 degree turn was to become so complete that Ocampo never returned to the figure or the figurative from the mid-1950s to the time of his death in 1978. Ocampo’s canvas has become a playground for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of childlike forms, and a manifestation of indigenous Filipino abstraction. There is primitive drama played out by biomorphic elements in a pre-verbal environment. Biomorphist art focuses on the power of natural life and uses organic shapes, with shapeless and vaguely spherical hints of the forms of biology. While biomorphic forms are abstract, they "refer to, or evoke, living forms..." The idea that painting needs no meaning other than a purely visual one- subverting the conservative assumption that it should have literary or moral meaning — appealed to H.R. Ocampo so much that he got to calling some of his works “visual melodies.” By the mid 1950's, Ocampo’s style became more spontaneous, with vaguely recognizable shapes presented in bright colours and bold forms.