PROPERTY FROM THE DON EUGENIO M. LOPEZ JR. COLLECTION

ABOUT THE WORK

Beyond his celebrated Diaphanous and Permutation series, the great Romulo Olazo also created landscape and still life pieces in which he showcased moving representations, unhindered creative freedom, and brilliant artistic inventiveness. Critic Cid Reyes wrote: “For him, every image is a subject and opportunity for aesthetic transcendence as he recorded the scene not with the rigid realism of exactitude but with gentle inflections of Impressionist brushstrokes.” Reyes’ observation rings true in Olazo’s pastel works. These two still life pieces of red ginger plants are rendered in robust strokes and prismatic style and exhibit evocative undertones. His modernist takes on nature’s beauty possess his mastery of light and color composition. It was also in 1991—the year these pieces were created—when Olazo had his one-man show titled “Landscape-Trees” in West Gallery which consisted of celebrated oil pastel pieces of traditional subjects depicted through a fusion of his impressionistic approach and abstract design.