PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF A DISTINGUISHED COUPLE

Provenance: Private Collection, Singapore

ABOUT THE WORK

Throughout the history of art, the endearing image of the mother and child has been a prominent symbolism of fertility and maternity. It has repeatedly unfolded its presence, emerging as a motif of empowerment and passion in an ideal setting. In Philippine art, the subject has become a permanent fixture due to the enduring devotion of Filipino Catholics to the Madonna and Child and our unswerving familial values. The Filipinos' natural matriarchal tendency has become so meaningful that virtually every Filipino artist has made the subject a part of their oeuvre. Notwithstanding the archetypal atmosphere of tenderness in the majority of the mother and child works, Benedicto Cabrera genuinely portrays the subject matter within the peripheries of social realism, devoid of the ideal and romantic. In Cabrera's art, the artist emphasizes that his Mother and Child works distinctly portray the Filipino family, without implying the spiritual but the secular and the mundane. Cabrera visually renders natural affection, compassion, dependability, and security into a work imbued with simplicity, sincerity, and rapport. The artist consciously portrays the intimate, unspoken moments of affection the two figures are engaged in, deliberately making his art a reflection of the Filipinos' collective affinity for kinship. Also, the mother and child are intentionally depicted as two tightly-knit figures, devoid of any futile elements, and rendered in Cabrera's distinctive bright, nuanced colors and bold brushstrokes. Cabrera's Mother and Child evokes Vicente Manansala's Madonna of the Slums, a portrayal of a mother and child from the rural areas who became shanty residents in Manila's sprawling and congested urban spaces. Similar to Manansala's treatment, Cabrera portrays the subjects as figures who may have probably abandoned their penurious living in the province in hopes of finding better prospects in the city. Unbeknownst to them, moving to a metropolis filled with false promises and missed opportunities will exacerbate their impoverished situation. The mother in Cabrera's piece resembles his most iconic subject— the destitute vagrant, Sabel. As Nick Joaquin wrote in The Hues of Hurt, "the crazed woman whose bed is the Bambang pavement has sardonically become the 'Lady Madonna' in the Mother-and-Child pictures. In one, her face is lifted in a scream, the child astride her back. On another, the child at her breast seems to be at the same time in her womb." The mother's physical appearance is stout due to the voluminous mantle. Bearing the weight of her own flesh and blood, the mother carries her swaddled child on her back. The thick piece of fabric represents the mother's steadfast commitment to safeguarding her child. Employing the art of drapery, Cabrera explores the dynamism of a material that he delicately renders and has come to symbolize the subjects' vulnerability to elements out of their control. At the same time, it is the drape that breathes life and sanguinity amidst a world replete with systemic injustice and inequality. As viewers, we can profoundly understand and experience the adversities and pains that a mother should endure for her child from this painting. In its entirety, the image symbolizes the intimate and personal relationship between the two figures despite their distressing circumstances. With this piece, Cabrera conveys to the viewer that regardless of his identity as a man, he is intimately capable of being sympathetic to the struggles of motherhood because before being a renowned national artist, he is first and foremost a child to his own mother.