PROPERTY FROM THE CELIA FLOR COLLECTION

Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist

ABOUT THE WORK

Vicente Manansala created landscape paintings with refined composure and restraint, as seen in this untitled piece done in 1971. He achieved this through his outstanding use of watercolor, his favorite medium. For him, the beauty of it is that it demands the artist to control it, it would be difficult if the artist allowed it to control them. Manansala excelled in manipulating the medium, which he had been using since childhood, even if many people found the unpredictability of watercolor problematic. He masterfully used the clear surface of the paper as a foil to the layers of color he applied to it, creating a diffused effect due to the greater amount of water used and allowing the colors to blend into each other more subtly. In the 1970, a year prior to the creation of this piece, Manansala was awarded the Patnubay ng Sining and received a grant from Germany to study in Zurich. (Isabella Romarate)