Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

Another characteristic Alcuaz shared with other Filipino abstractionists of his generation was the eagerness to engage in various media. Alcuaz is known for his tapestries, although he has also produced innumerable abstractions, even figurative works like portraits, nudes, still lifes, and landscapes. Even in his tapestries his abstract designs were dark and convoluted, allusive of organic shapes, vegetal or visceral. They had the energy and spontaneity of the subconscious, but of unusually vivid colors and textures, with much of their interest in the play of shapes. Alcuaz stayed for long periods in Spain and Czechoslovakia. In Brno, Czechoslovakia, he designed tapestries for a workshop and produced a number of splendid exemplars. In 1977 Alcuaz was quoted: “I must have done 80 to 90 tapestries in all. I have exhibited these tapestries in Holland, Austria, Spain and New York.”