Provenance: Salcedo Auctions

ABOUT THE WORK

The Universe Within — a true innovator in contemporary Philippine art, Joya has sought to join that imagined gap connecting Eastern and Western painting. At the same time, Joya has injected a wonderfu l personal element in his art to create a subtle earthiness and a sense of universal fantasy. The extent to which Joya’s brushwork became freer and more impassioned in his later years, though also, in a curious way, decorative, can be seen in this painting. These statements are always conspicuously loud, expressed through a combination of strong color and movement, as if to say, that everything is always in constant motion, in a state of flux, generating energy. At the same time his larger than life character — his impulsiveness and energy — and the confident spontaneity of his lines and his unique chromatic preferences were completely current and relevant long after the era when artists such as Jackson Pollock made an impact in the art world. As early as the early 70s, Joyas’ art had become placid, much of it reflecting facile manipulation of decorative elements and little else.