Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

These mixed media artworks showed the process of etherealization of subjects almost into abstraction: bold brushwork with rapid squiggles. All motion and lightness, achieved partly by freely disposed line and partly by the vibrant contrast of dark and light. The details are spare — if any at all, the figures fluidly delineated with a minimal background. Bencab’s exploration of form found its way out of the late neo realism and high abstraction of the sixties to be able to reconsider the potency of figurative expression in the seventies through the contemporary era. He used both expressive and precise visual languages, which he coalesced through the consistency of his authoritative line. The pressure of the brush accentuates BenCab’s attention to the appropriate density of blacks, the boldness of his brushstrokes, and the occasional use of color to highlight the inherent tensions have an almost magical balance in them within the entire range of his art.