PROPERTY FROM THE DON EUGENIO “GENY” M. LOPEZ JR. COLLECTION

ABOUT THE WORK

"THE LOPEZ LEGACY COLLECTION : A MICROCOSM OF GREAT PHILIPPINE ART Ragamuffin or Romantic Figure? BenCab Paints the Filipino Woman by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL Part ragamuffin, part mad woman, part symbol of the Filipino female, Benedicto “BenCab” began painting his enigmatic depiction of ‘Sabel’ in the 1970s. She embodied the desperation of the Manila streets. Cabrera would slyly use her wretched but strangely beguiling form — in the same way that he employed sepia colonial photographs for his ‘Larawan’ series— to create dexterous, coded portraits of a wicked present. BenCab would begin his career as a young illustrator for Liwayway and the Sunday Times Magazine, both Roces publications, and would thread his way successfully through the heady mix of 1960s Manila of poets, artists, and journalists that inhabited Ermita and Malate. He would re-locate like David Medalla to London with his English wife and attract a bohemian set of clients that included musicians and theater actresses such as the renowned Glenda Jackson. The Lopez family were kingpins of that Manila period and their collection of art, housed in the first Lopez Museum in Manila, was guided by influential intellectuals such as the historian Renato V. Constantino and the art critic Rod Paras-Perez. It would no doubt shape the tastes of Don Geny Lopez who sought to expand the collection during his regime. ‘Wandering Woman’ is emblematic not just of BenCab’s ruminations on sexual politics but also his inexorable rise in the Philippine art scene. The femme in this portrait is no longer dour and monochromatic but colored with the sophistication (not unlike Cabrera himself) of foreign lands. She is now dressed in rich corals, a checkered jacket, and a green bonnet, but as the title suggests, remains footloose and fancy free on the streets of strange cities, hiding her smile with a hand that masks her true identity. "