Accompanied by a certificate issued by Mrs. Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazo confirming the authenticity of this lot

Provenance: Private collection, USA

ABOUT THE WORK

The Pacific Theater of World War II did not spare the Philippines from the horrors of the war. Then a territory of the United States, the Philippines was thrown in the middle of the war, with its capital Manila suffering great casualties and considered one of the most devastated capital cities alongside Berlin and Warsaw. This devastation had affected many Filipinos trapped in the city capital, with one of them the elderly Amorsolo. The quinquagenarian (or a fifty-year-old) Amorsolo was left significantly weakened by the battle. His daughter Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazo said in a September 2022 interview with ANCX that he, along with the men of the family, stayed in their house during the occupation. “We lived near Azcarraga before the War, but when the Japanese set up a garrison right across the street from our house,” she recalls. “My father wanted to keep all the womenfolk safe; so he hired another house ... in Raon. My mother and all the girls were sent there. Papa and the boys stayed in that house on Morayta.” This stay at Morayta also almost became a death sentence for the elderly Amorsolo. Already in his fifties, he was also a diabetic and the ongoing war made medications extremely difficult to procure. After the Battle of Manila, American businessman and US Intelligence Chick Parsons made rounds at the war-worn city in search of the sick and the injured. Among the injured and in need of insulin is Amorsolo, languishing in the dim corner of his studio. Even excluding his medical needs, the horrors of the war have embedded itself in Amorsolo’s psyche. “Papa had a black and white camera then but I don’t know if he was using it to capture the scenes,” Mrs. Sylvia says. “He would tell us that he would even go up on the roof of the house in Azcarraga to look at the airplanes on their bombing runs.” “My father had a collection of newspapers of every single day of the War,” Mrs. Sylvia adds. “He used his works to depict the war crimes and the refugee crisis.” The result is a 1940s frenzy of Amorsolo’s recollection of the war. The Lot in Hand, a 1945 oil painting entitled Ruins of War, portrays the decimated ruins left by the war. Amorsolo had dated the piece April 24, 1945, right in the heat of the war as many Axis countries would unconditionally surrender in the months to come. The Battle of Manila was waged for a whole month, where intense destruction befell when American bombing leveled out large areas of the “Pearl of the Orient Seas.” Manila became the battleground of the fiercest urban fighting fought by the American forces in the Pacific War, with countless cultural and historical treasures lost to the carnage. It was in this backdrop that Fernando Amorsolo approached his 1940s war paintings. In Ruins of War, his classical style and vivid sunlight is still evident and yet it shines down on ruins. Here, one can see the rubbles of concrete after the bombing; here, they can see a row of decimated houses, roofs blown out into the air. Despite the traditional beauty of his works, he does not shy away from depicting the horrors of the war. This is Amorsolo, inhibited and free, stealing away whatever time he had to go up to their rooftop and depict whatever it is his eyes see. “My father would paint every day,” Mrs. Sylvia says. “He hated being idle but during the War, he believed that it was important and that he needed to record what was happening around him.” (Hannah Valiente)