This piece is accompanied by a certificate issued by Finale Art File confirming the authenticity of this lot

Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

Exhibited: Metropolitan Museum of Manila, "Ang Kiukok; A Retrospective", Manila, Philippines, 2000 Finale Art File, "Via Dolorosa - Ang Kiukok" Makati City, Philippines, April 11 - 29, 2017

Literature: Roces, Alfredo, Kiukok: Deconstructing Despair, Finale Art File, Mandaluyong City, Philippines, p. 401 (illustrated); Finale Art File, "Via Dolorosa - Ang Kiukok", Makati City, Philippines, 2017, (illustrated)

ABOUT THE WORK

Jesus’ downward gaze does not directly engage the eye of the spectator. With all profundity and mystery it is one of the more poetical and sublime pictures of Christ as depicted by Ang Kiukok. One of the most purely poetical pictures of divine suffering he produced. “In the earliest crosses, the figure of Christ is straight and erect, placed symmetrically along the center line of the cross, with the eyes wide open and neither face nor body giving any indication of pain. Writing on the subject Henry Clifford has said, “As time goes on, the head gradually droops, and the body starts to bend slightly to the left, under the weight of suffering. The next development is to show the figure of Christ dead on the cross and the body curved out more and more. While it is not an infallible rule, roughly speaking, these painted crosses can be dated almost by the degree of curvature up until the time of Giotto.” Ang Kiukok borrows its approach and techniques to pursue the opposite i.e., to synthesize what has been broken down into a unified interpretation of human agony. In his maturity, Ang Kiukok’s essential subject became even more the violence of the elements, above all of the forces that both create and destroy. It is no wonder that cave paintings are still invested with so powerful an emotional reality. This emotional reality, sometimes departing far from visual reality, is the preoccupation of the expressionistic artist today. Although Ang Kiukok reduces his images into basic planes and shapes to bring out only the most elemental forms, his works nevertheless ably achieves emotional power within the context of a contemporary art idiom. The cross is in no landscape or other spatial setting. Its Spartan design and intense, but quietly expressed feeling make this a powerful image reminiscent of some of Medieval frescoes in the convents of Europe. The formal balance as brought by the centrality of the cross imbues a spiritual restraint to an otherwise raging theme. This image has a more self contained, meditative feel about it. This depiction of Christ with the Cross behind him is an outraged cry of protest on one hand and a quiet plea on the other, against man’s inhumanity to man, against corruption, meanness and human degradation.