Provenance: Provenance: Private Collection, Australia

ABOUT THE WORK

In the Diaphanous series, form and color are fused as one in a faint but interlocked relationship, and from their union emanates a disembodied, spectral look. Intriguingly, the rich, dense, and complex layers of light — even in works that disport a flourish and flamboyance of forms — never lose their austere quality. Olazo began his career as an artist when the foundations of a modernist tradition were being laid by key figures such as Vicente Manansala, Victorio Edades, H.R Ocampo, and Fernando Zobel. Olazo first came to the fore as a printmaker who made striking innovations in this field. This fed into the development of his Diaphanous series, a unique body of abstract paintings that “are veritable visions of light. They have been likened to dragonfly wings, sheets of gossamer veil or gauze, and even a symphony.” Olazo always had an impulse toward pristine compositions. Olazo experimented by switching pigment types, from the traditional printer’s ink that registered flat and opaque images to the painter’s oil pigments that created translucent layers. This allowed him to achieve the effects of light and texture. He then experimented further by cutting old newspapers as stenciled patterns. The pigment is applied with a brush or by a single run of the squeegee to as many as five layers. The technique may be likened to the age-old painting technique of glazing wherein translucent layers of oil paint are applied thinly and evenly until it builds up to the desired tone and texture.