PROPERTY FROM THE PRISCILLA L. CHIONGBIAN COLLECTION

Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist

ABOUT THE WORK

Looking Through the Lens of the Indigenous Amorsolo Paints the Igorots of the Cordilleras The heart and soul of what it means to be Filipino at a crucial turning point in our history runs deep in the works of Fernando Amorsolo: romantic and idyllic yet profoundly echoes the nationalistic sentiments of his time. In the 1920s, when a renewed sense of Filipino nationalism was at its height, spurred by the incessant and heated debates for the independence of the Philippines from four centuries of colonial rule, Amorsolo’s pastoral paintings became the quintessential image of the Filipino people, who were, consciously or unconsciously, rebelling against the relentless “Americanization” of the nation. “Faced with Americanization and urbanization, the national identity sought to reaffirm itself in the pastoral life of Filipinos,” critic Alfredo Roces writes in his 1975 monograph on Amorsolo. The kundiman became the popular music, fostered by the likes of Nicanor Abelardo and Francisco Santiago, folk dances were being “rediscovered,” compiled, and studied by Francisca Reyes, and Amorsolo’s dalagang bukid was at the helm of promoting the autochthonous pastoral as the foundation of the Filipino identity. There was another facet to Amorsolo’s art during the 1920s besides the ubiquitous image of the charming and innocent dalaga. Beginning in the mid to late 1920s, Amorsolo produced a series of works centering on the Indigenous tribes of the Philippines, particularly the Igorots inhabiting the cold mountains of the Cordilleras in Northern Luzon. Igorots Overlooking the Cordilleras is a breath of fresh air from Amorsolo’s mostly Tagalog-centric genre paintings. Amorsolo’s vigorous strokes and heavy impastos attest to the artist’s dynamic and confident creative flair during his “golden years.” Cool tones dominate the composition, evoking the temperate climate of the Cordillera region. Amorsolo’s colors are rich and “pure.” Amorsolo depicts four Igorot women resting amid a panoramic backdrop of a majestic mountain, which the artist renders in hazy blues and outlined with faint dabs of paint. Amorsolo’s knowledge of indigenous culture is evident in his depiction of the kayabang, a conical rattan basket used exclusively by the Ibaloi women to collect, carry, and transport fruits, vegetables, and crops, such as games (yams) and camotes grown through swidden farming techniques in Benguet. The kayabang is worn around the head and supported on both sides by two long straps of rattan called the apid. The kayabang brought convenience to the Ibalois as the basket filled with goods was supported by the head rather than the torso, helping them traverse the steep mountain slopes of the Cordilleras. Amorsolo also depicts the Ibaloi women donning their “divit,” a two-piece clothing composed of the “kambal” (upper garment) and the “divit” (wrap-around lower garment). Amorsolo’s Igorots Overlooking the Cordilleras is essentially an anthropological record and a part of the broader scope of “Filipinism” of the 1920s. The indigenous groups of the Cordilleras, who had successfully repealed centuries of colonial rule and maintained their cultural integrity, have been subjected to fetishization and sensationalism and deemed “savage, primitive, and inferior” by the Americans, especially at the “human zoos” of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Igorots Overlooking the Cordilleras shows Amorsolo at the height of his impressionist powers, adamant about the power of his brush in elevating the indigenous into the national consciousness. For Amorsolo, the indigenous is an integral part of the collective national identity that makes the Philippines a harmonious whole. It is in the indigenous that a people’s identity and, ultimately, culture and history, ideals and aspirations sprang forth. (Adrian Maranan)