Aside from his explorations of the Philippines’ colonial past via old photographs, or his social commentaries via the famed madwoman, Sabel, Benedicto Cabrera or BenCab has occasionally ventured beyond his own artistic archetypes. Cabrera’s unique and personal creations exude a documentary-like quality to them in terms of their perceived sincerity and candor. By doing so, Cabrera successfully captures the verve and reality of the Filipino spirit by moving away from locating it as an essence of the soul but finding it through the lived experiences of the individual and the community. Cabrera’s use of flat lighting only serves to amplify this thematic intention. By contrasting the foreground and background through a disparity of color and light values and not of shadow, Cabrera’s figurative style transforms the seemingly particular into the universal through means of subjective association.
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Benedicto Cabrera (b. 1942)
Lovers
signed and dated 1994 (lower right)
acrylic on canvas
24" x 18" (61 cm x 46 cm)
SOLD: PHP 5,372,800
Provenance:
Private Collection, Manila