Provenance: :
Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

Towards the 1950s, the Philippine art landscape was flamboyantly becoming unorthodox, revolutionized, and radical. During this time, a brash, new breed of artists would spawn an avant-garde style embedded into the Filipino consciousness—thus, Neo-Realism was born. The ravages of the Second World War also brought an iconoclastic attitude towards the academicism in Philippine art that pervaded the preceding decades. This practice was first undertaken by six artists whose names were closely associated with the early years of the Philippine Art Gallery (PAG): Romeo Tabuena, Hernando R. Ocampo, Vicente Manansala, Victor Oteyza, Ramon Estella, and Cesar Legaspi. From the first generation, a second one emerged. Hugo Yonzon Jr. belonged to that younger cohort, which also included Arturo Luz, Mauro Malang Santos, Jose Joya, and Ang Kiukok. According to the Philippine Center New York, the neo-realist approach to genre scenes in solid but graceful, overlapping geometric forms became Yonzon's preferred style. A rare triptych by Yonzon and one of his early forays into Neo-Realism, the artist painted this piece after winning the First Prize in modern painting at the Art Association of the Philippines' (AAP) 7th annual exhibition in 1954. According to Santiago Albano Pilar, this work is highly significant in the annals of Philippine modern art, for "it was painted in the first authentically Filipino artistic expression, Neo-Realism." This piece reflects Yonzon's Filipino sensibility. Yonzon captures the struggle of the Filipinos towards recovery and rehabilitation associated with the post-war period. The figures are blatantly contorted, signifying the people's anguish and the social turmoil that ensued from the ravages of the war. Emmanuel Torres writes in Art Philippines: "They [the NeoRealists] saw the need to portray life's tensions and conflicts, like the horror and devastation of the recent war…painting Amorsolo-like pastoral visions of the Philippine countryside had reached a dead end." Amid the chaos and disorientation, they continue with their everyday affairs, whether in recreation or toiling. The figures' skin tones are rendered in deep browns, evoking the Filipinos' kayumanggi complexion. Yonzon employs deeply saturated colors, which Albano Pilar referred to as contrasting "with the harmoniously lame pleasantness or sweetness of the Amorsolo palette." The colors are discernibly rich and bold, symbolizing the people's confidence and optimism—their collective faith in the promise of rebirth and renewal under the banner of independence and self-determination. With this piece, Yonzon makes a statement—we Filipinos are never to be subjugated and enslaved again. (A.M.)