PROPERTY FROM THE PARSONS FAMILY COLLECTION

Provenance: Philippine Art Gallery

ABOUT THE WORK

The Chick Parsons Tabuena From the Artist’s Neo-Realist Period The post-war Philippine art scene was both a tragedy and a capsule of hope. Amid the cultural destruction, the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP), founded in 1948 and headed by Purita Kalaw-Ledesma, rose to prominence as the leading vanguard and custodian of Filipino cultural heritage. The AAP would hold its annual exhibitions and competitions, at first separated into the conservative and modern categories. But the tides would always turn in favor of the moderns, who, even in the first AAP competition in 1948, had swept all the major awards, from the first prize won by Botong Francisco for Kaingin up to the sixth prize won by H.R. Ocampo for Nude with Candle and Flower. The glaring reality of the post-war period put modernism on its own pedestal. “The moderns were searching for truth, while the conservatives were merely repeating themselves. It was as simple as that,” Purita Kalaw-Ledesma writes in her seminal book The Struggle for Philippine Art. Out of the ashes rose the core group of the Neo-Realists, whose artistic manifesto was rooted in Francesco de Santi: “To create reality, an artist must first have the force to kill it. But instantly, the fragments draw together again, in love with each other, seeking one another, coming together with desire, with the obscure presentiment of the new life to which they are destined.” The Neo-Realists felt compelled to break away from the Classical-Romantic tradition espoused by Amorsolo and depict reality as it is—bold and harrowing yet still encapsulating the Filipino people’s stories of shared struggles and hopes amidst the ruins of war, effectively resonating with the current times. The original Neo-Realists comprised H.R. Ocampo, Cesar Legaspi, Vicente Manansala, Romeo Tabuena, Victor Oteyza, and Ramon Estella. They would first exhibit on June 17, 1950 at the Manila Hotel and sponsored by the AAP. Tabuena, formerly an illustrator for The Evening News, had joined the circle of Manansala (also an illustrator for The Evening News, where the two crossed paths), Legaspi, Ocampo, and Estella. He would slowly learn painting from his weekly sojourns with his friends. “…The friends would meet on Sundays at each other’s house to show what each had painted during the week and to comment on each other’s works,” writes Kalaw-Ledesma in the book The Biggest Little Room: A History of the Philippine Art Gallery. Tabuena’s Lavanderas, one of his earliest paintings, bears the hallmark of the Neo-Realist propensity to fragment and, eventually, reconstruct forms in accordance with the social vibrations of their times. With bowed heads and backs and distorted figures and facial expressions, the women veer away from the Amorsolo image of the charming dalaga— all smiles, a beacon of radiance, romantically sentimental, idealized. In Tabuena’s work, the colors, applied with much vigor, still retain their brightness—a perfect juxtaposition between the chaos of distortion and the optimistic resilience represented by a vibrant palette. Chick Parsons, who stayed in Manila after his legendary military exploits in the war, may have been drawn to this poignant reminder of the post-war situation and how the people he wholeheartedly loved possess the earnest ability to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of physical and moral destruction. (Adrian Maranan)