Provenance: Private Collection, USA

ABOUT THE WORK

The fastest brush in town, as fellow Neo-Realist H.R Ocampo called him during those first hectic years of the Philippine Art Gallery, was also the most versatile, the most prolific, and one of the most popular. In 1955, Tabuena settled in Mexico, where he lived with his Norwegian wife Nina. However, he retained his Philippine citizenship. He painted the mural Filipiniana in the Philippine Embassy in Washington, D.C. In 1965, he participated in the Eighth Sao Paulo Art Biennial as the official Filipino artist and as the art commissioner from the Philippines. In this still life from 1963, randomly mundane objects are represented with completeness. It is compressed into a few square inches without any effect of crowding or jumbling. For all its logic and clarity the picture remains a remarkable example of Tabuena’s powers of invention and pictorial composition.