Provenance: Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

Time and time again, Romulo Galicano reveals a virtuoso depiction of the world but one that is seen from an almost heroic perspective, which makes even common scenes rife with drama. This quality of his work is immediately palpable in this evocation of a wintry landscape. Using pastel as medium, Galicano presents a stand of trees whose leaves are beginning to turn. Their trunks and branches gnarled and twisted, they are the dynamic figures in the scenery flat with a view of the land and a suggestion of a lake. The spires and towers of civilization are muted presences in the distance, their occasional silhouettes seen and breaking through the haze. The sky above all these elements is white and equally flat, which further magnifies the seeming coldness of the view. Undeniably picturesque, this is a quiet and powerful work of Galicano, the foremost master realist from the Visayas.