Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist

ABOUT THE WORK

How deep was the Filipino engagement with Cubism? A handful of artists such as Ang Kiukok demonstrated a precise understanding of Cubism’s tenets and implications and they could parse its substructures with aplomb. Yet sometimes, Ang Kiukok was more gingerly in approach, borrowing the surface aspects of Cubism, yet never giving up the more realistic basis of his art. The townscape appears deceptively childlike simple, but actually reveals lines cum planes interlocked at various squarish angles, giving an illusion of multilayeredness that sporadically opens up, clips to one side, and turns to the other in mechanical cadence. Geometric forms are given life as visual elements by the way in which they are painted — forms overlap suggesting hinted spaces on the flat canvas. Ang Kiukok has dispensed with all irrelevant detail. The almost surreal method of presenting familiar objects in unfamiliar combinations produces a disorienting effect. It is Kiukok’s metaphor of a world where something stable is not what it seems and security at best a temporary respite. The planes of the buildings stand up at sharp angles from one another. The effect is disquieting, and yet compositionally, all is of a piece, each architectural structure supportive of the other in precarious balance.