PROPERTY FROM THE JESUS AND MARITESS PINEDA COLLECTION

Literature: Roces, Alfredo. Anita Magsaysay-Ho: In Praise of Women (With Annotations on Paintings by Anita Magsaysay-Ho).
Pasig City: The Crucible Workshop, 2005. Full-color illustration and painting description on page 281.

ABOUT THE WORK

Anita Magsaysay-Ho (May 25, 1914 - May 5, 2012) was— and is—a pre-eminent figure in the world of Filipino modern art. She was also the only female member of the Thirteen Moderns, a group of Filipino avant-garde artists. She was born in 1914 in Manila. Her father Ambrosio Magsaysay, an engineer, was Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay’s uncle. Anita was painting from the age of nine. She studied at the School of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines, under the tutelage of Filipino master painters Fabian de la Rosa, and his nephews Fernando and Pablo Amorsolo, as well as Ireneo Miranda and Vicente Rivera y Mir. She studied at Manila’s School of Design, under Victorio Edades and Enrique Ruiz. She then left in the 1930s to go to the United States, where she studied at the New York Students’ League under Kenneth Hayes Miller, Will Barnet and Robert Ward Johnson. She also studied at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, under Zoltan Sepeshy. She moved to New York City, where she gave painting and drawing lessons. There, she met Robert Ho from Hong Kong. They married and moved to China, where Ho’s shipping company, Magsaysay Inc., began. The couple eventually had five children and they moved frequently because of Ho’s work. They lived in Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. Wherever she lived, Anita had a studio where she could paint. Although she was eventually identified as one of the Thirteen Moderns, in the early 1940s, the influence of her teacher Fernando Amorsolo was still clearly visible, both in terms of subject and technique. Later, her work evolved toward modernism. In the work at hand, Anita masterfully captures the roughness and vigor associated with the famed sabungero, whose pastime was, and remains to be, a ubiquitous sight in virtually every corner of the country. It is an Amorsolo subject, but treated so differently. The brushstrokes are strong, the colors are deftly applied. The technique is brute, but the charm of the sabungero and the implied rural scene comes across. Critic E. Aguilar Cruz included her among the Neo-Realists, which later evolved into the Philippine Art Gallery group, which also numbered other women artists, Lyd Arguilla and Nena Saguil. Through the 1950s, she consistently won top awards from the Art Association of the Philippines. Her compositions emphasized movement and bustling interaction by means of bold, vigorous brushstrokes, and strong tonal contrasts of light and dark, particularly when she was using egg tempera. Magsaysay-Ho’s most famous works are those identified with the everyday lives of Filipino women, who characteristically wore scarves, had slanted eyes, in angular poses. In her old age, she could not work with oils anymore, the fumes overcame her. She continued to paint until her 2009 stroke. She died three years later, just three weeks before her 98th birthday. Her paintings continue to command the highest prices for works by a Filipino artist. This painting is important because it shows Anita Magsaysay’s style in transition. (From the Ramon Villegas Archives)