Provenance: Provenance: Galleria Duemila, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

A pioneer of Philippine modernism, Lee Aguinaldo was among the first generation of Filipino abstractionists best recognized for his oil and acrylic gestural and linear masterpieces. Coming from an influential family descended from the military leader and the first president of the Philippines, Emilio Aguinaldo, the highly self-taught artist was celebrated among Manila’s elite from the 1950s to the 1970s and among the art circles in the country and abroad. Lee Aguinaldo was close with Arturo Luz, Roberto Chabet, and Eric Torres, and Fernando Zobel was his friend and mentor. Since his childhood days, Lee Aguinaldo already showed a passion for art. The first group show he entered was the annual exhibit at the Philippine Art Gallery (PAG). He also participated in the first non-objective group art exhibit with the likes of Fernando Zobel, Vicente Manansala, H.R. Ocampo, Arturo Luz, Victor Oteyza, and Nena Saguil. The PAG would later on exhibit his works several times. Among his most popular works is his Linear series that exhibit his distinct color sensibilities and perspective on beauty that defies the co nventional Filipino’s perceptions on the said quality. Acrylic pigments are applied constantly and repeatedly in a calculated, precise painterly technique to achieve the smoothness of the surface. Linear No. 82 belongs to Lee Aguinaldo’s bold and minimalist Linear No. 82 belongs to Lee Aguinaldo’s bold and minimalist acrylic hard-edge Linear works that engage the viewer with the featured frame presenting an alluring geometric quality. There is a sense of conscious, rational order at work in the sparseness and directness of the piece, a feature in his paintings noted by art critics who studied his oeuvre. His expressive use of color, which he considered a sufficient physical presence that gives the perceiver’s senses an objective exercise, adds to its overall visual impact. His artistic evolution was influenced by the styles and techniqu es of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhart, and Robert Rauschenberg. He also derived concepts from the works of European Baroque painters that he studied. Aguinaldo was also one of the first Filipino artists wh o adopted Pop Art ideas and applied it in his art—a towering figure and visionary artist whose deftness in rendering the visual non-figurative idiom is indisputable.