Provenance:
Acquired directly from the artist by Floy Aguenza

Exhibited:
Tall Galeries, Metropolitan Museum of Manila,
Si Mang Enteng... Encountering Manansala,
Manila, May 20 - July 31, 2010

Literature: Si Mang Enteng... Encountering Manansala. Metropolitan Museum of Manila. Manila. 2010. p. 28

ABOUT THE WORK

There is an equally delicious backstory to this marvelous painting. The collector reminisces that Mang Engteng would relentlessly pursue her to sit for a portrait ‘deshabille’ or partly clothed, if not at all — a request she staunchly refused. Finally, the master produced this painting for her, saying that the third peddler with back turned was her — and pointing out that the fish ogling her was none other than him. It’s a mischievous memento of this modern master who was renowned for his pranks and easy wit. Vicente Silva Manansala was one of the founding fathers of the post-war group of iconoclasts who called themselves the ‘Neo-Realists.’ He was, after all, embroiled in the same world of journalism as its ringleader Hernando R. Ocampo and all the rest of them. H.R. and he worked in the Philippines Herald before the war and they even had a joint-exhibition at the University of the Philippines Library in 1939. His first painting, according to an account by art archivist Manuel D. Duldulao was to another newsman, Salvador P. Lopez who paid P30 for a pastel called Broken Vase, payable in six monthly installments. (Manansala in later years would grumble that S.P. had conveniently forgotten to pay him the last P5.) By the 1970s, Manansala was flushed with success. He was not only the recipient of an armful of awards, (including the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1963 and the Araw ng Maynila award in 1970), he was also the country’s most sought-after painter. In 1972, he was among the first to be honored with an exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ (CCP) prestigious Main Gallery. His one-man shows would attract thousands of guests on opening night and the entire show — usually of 40 paintings — would be snapped up in ten minutes according to newspaper reports. He was indubitably one of the immortals of the ‘Thirteen Moderns.’ Manansala had several sides to his art : The first being the abstracts produced under the aegis of the legendary Philippine Art Gallery. He was one of its important featured artists and he was selected to show three paintings at the PAG exhibitions in New York and Washington. The second were his riotously colored turns at a Filipino cubism, influenced by his interest in stained glass techniques. (The U.S. State Department had sent him on a special grant to study at Greenland Studios in NYC in 1960.) Both of these facets were used to take careful aim at the Filipino condition, from life in the slums to queuing for rice rations to the narratives of candle vendors and vegetable hawkers. But there was also a third aspect to his art which was worldly, intimate, and more carnal. These can be found in his portraits of society girls and the occasional matron who would flock to his studio to have themselves painted in exchange for their pick of the master’s various works. The piquantly titled Tsismis captures three vegetable sellers, busy not so much with balancing the day’s array of eggplants and fruit on their heads but with the retailing of the day’s freshest gossip. One need not have to eavesdrop to guess at the stories rolling off their tongues. The arched eyebrows, sidelong looks, sharp gazes say it all. Manansala colors them in the shades of summer and their background of sidewalk tarps give an illusion of lush greenery, as if they were suspended elsewhere in a world of happy imagination.