This piece is accompanied by a certificate issued by Mrs. Josefa Joya-Baldovino confirming the authenticity of this lot.

ABOUT THE WORK

In the 1980s Joya created a kind of painting that appeared to be a regrouping of his abstract masses, a retrenchment of the sensibility in favor of order and balance, as against the almost orgiastic abandon of his abstract painting days. The new concern did not sacrifice the artist’s delight in texture and paint for their own sakes. Such an ordering of details must be held to some kind of organized discipline if the abstracted subject is not to be lost in a jumble of incidental attractions. But he was as absorbed with the creation of linear rhythms as any oriental. He began to apply tissue paper tear-offs into his oils and pigments, somewhat in the manner of a collage work, except that the tear-offs are not on the painting surface but under or in it, as in Vietnamese lacquer painting. But visually they are akin to the Filipino “kiping”. Joya exemplifies the artist who has assimilated Western influences and transformed them into his own individual style that still reflects the native Filipino hedonism and temper. Whatever the original stimulus, and irrespective of Joya’s ability to capture its phenomenal essence, the subjects of these pictures resonate and are imbued with personal feeling. “Bird Song” is a virtuoso display of Joya’s newfound controlled freedom, with complex swathes of collage effects, varied in hue, tone and texture, checked by an abrupt downward movement of the arcs.