Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

Cesar Legaspi espoused the cause of modern art from its fledgling years and nurtured it, with the help of his fellow artists, to full maturity. Yet, clearly enough the paintings of Neo-Realist Cesar Legaspi serve as an important example of how Western style can be transformed and changed - indigenized, in fact. To suit the local sensibility and temperament. In Legaspi’s work, for instance, the rigorous intellectual approach of modernism gave way to its more harmonious and decorative facet, such as his image of a female mango vendor on a framed ceramic plate. Market scenes such as this "Mango Vendor" shows Legaspi at his prettiest and features his consummate talent as a draftsman capable of deft rendering. Defined in sharp outlines, vestiges of his earliest works show again. Legaspi eminently exemplifies the artist who has assimilated Western influences and transformed them into his own individual style that likewise reflects the native hedoism and artistic temper.