Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

Alice Guillermo posited that, “The power and fascinating quality of Legaspi’s [paintings] stem from the feeling that they strike deep into subconscious reserves of energy and imagination. Aside from being dramatic metaphors of ‘the human condition,’ they are also visual correlatives of inner moods and psychological weathers.” Known for confronting injustice and raising awareness of the circumstances of the working class, Legaspi was instrumental in the acceptance of modern art by redefining cubism using Philippine context. His distinctive geometric fragmentation disrupted the cubist idiom by altering angularity and merging forms through rhythmical delineation. Both part of the influential Thirteen Moderns and Neo-Realists, he localized Western visual art theory, spearheading modern artful conception and approach for subsequent generations of Filipino artists. Despite his deuteranopia — red-green colour-blindness (red appearing as brown or pink, and green as beige) — he was a master colorist stating, “Colors don’t come from my eyes, they come from my imagination.” He was able to overcome this affliction by coordinating his palette with a color wheel, determining the hues based on the wheel’s position. As a result, his color palettes acquired a rich tint due to these contrasting tonalities. His undulant geometrical utilizations of structure and bisecting of bodies into greater facets which imbricate and slice through space in clear arched-cadences achieves an abundantly composed composition of hues and tones. He fully releases the articulate aptitude of color which creates a lush colorful atmosphere with a multitude of forms. Creating plangency in space, these layers of transparent movements constitute a polychromatic effect while his lambency enhances hues or de-materializes them into airy translucence. Curator Ditas Samson observed that, “The human torso was his vessel for visual expression... When he was a child, his lungs were filled with water, and so doctors had to periodically drain them and inject antiseptic. During this time, he would feel waters sloshing inside him. This is why the torsos in his paintings are fluid.” In this work, it is unique that Legaspi's enthralment is evident for figures both human and equine. His organic “biota” imagery is especially apparent, conjoining man and beast as one in a visceral weft. The two figures and three horses forms undulate to overlap to their own shared cadence of tonal synchronicity, fully expressing the rich texture of potential color.