Provenance: Provenance: Eda Grande Collection Private Collection, San Francisco, USA

ABOUT THE WORK

Throughout his career, Manansala continually alternated between greater abstraction and greater figuration; though his figurative works often contain abstract elements. In this painting, originally from the JV Cruz Collection, Manansala doesn’t throw the peasant women into sharp relief, a technique that would only emphasize a sense of pathos on the hardworking subjects. Instead , he blends them into the overall ethereal mood of transparence, reflection, iridescence, luminous coloring, opalescence, flowing forms and volumes, all are defined and held in transparent cubism all Manansala’s own, eliminating any heavy handed sense of grit and toil. The Neorealists, of which Manansala was a member, perceived abstract art as taking two directions. One is non naturalistic, in which subject matter is altered or transformed by simplification, distortion, fragmentation or deconstruction to give greater prominence to line, color, volume, pattern, composition, and paint quality. The result is representational abstraction. It doesn’t mean that Manansala did not subscribe to the social consciousness aesthetic. The artist has had an abiding sympathy for common folk like beggars and vendors. Occasionally, he would indulge in the inequities between rich and poor. Color takes new meanings in the hands of Manansala. Color becomes an inquiry into visual relationships that range from the backdrop atmosphere to the controlled pictorial forms of the two farmer figures. Beneath the surface gloss and visual exuberance of these workers in the rice field can be seen a craftsmanship honed by many years of study of the works by Picasso, Braque and Gris. Yet Manansala’s skills have deeper roots. Only a few years younger than Carlos Botong Francisco, Manansala had a joint exhibit with him in 1930 at an art gallery in Intramuros called Philippine Vistas. It was the first commercial art gallery in Manila, pioneered by Ester Aenelle. That was the first art exhibit for the works of Botong Francisco who is honored today as a National Artist, a title which Manansala was also to be awarded with. During the 1930 exhibit, Manansala then was only 20 and indelibly delighted to be in the company of an artist he much admired and whose zest for Philippine scenes and people he was to match through the years. As seen in the works of Neorealists Manansala, Tabuena, and Legaspi, it takes perceived reality as a starting point: but instead reproducing it with the accuracy of direct observation, they recreate it in ways that strongly emphasize the purely plastic and organizational qualities of a painting. Describing the result as abstract becomes a matter of comparative degree. That is to say, some works are more abstract than others with respect to how much of subject matter is reduced in terms of likeness to natural appearance. Manansala indulged in subtle faceting and the use of vibrant color, discarding the conventions of natural forms. Manansala’s own take on cubism grew out of a seething era of inquiry and experiment, with his generation of modernist artists seeking to make iconic Filipino imagery as their vehicle for their unique modernist visions and forms. This must be one of Manansala's most favorite and intriguing subjects as he always repeated this in watercolor, ink wash, and oil. He revisited this subject all throughout his life.