PROPERTY FROM THE DON VICENTE "TIKING" H. LOPEZ COLLECTION

Provenance: ;
Acquired directly from the artist

ABOUT THE WORK

AN HEIR TO THE LEGENDARY ‘BROWN MADONNA’ by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL In 1950, Vicente Manansala would create a painting entitled ‘Madonna of the Slums’. It would become a touchstone for the art of post-War Manila, capturing in its somber tones the city’s ‘barong-barong’, the makeshift houses that rose from the rubble of the devastated neighborhoods and its inhabitants. Amid this sobering vista, the central figure is a mother, wide-eyed in her optimism — because Manansala’s works are never completely devoid of hope — carrying a baby, as naked as the newly-born Christ Child, in her arms. They both turn their eyes to the viewer in askance, challenging him for an answer to their oppressive condition. Manansala knew first-hand of the ‘barong-barong’, living hand-to-mouth as a bootblack inside the walls of Intramuros; later, as a poorly-paid artist for the newly returned Philippine Herald. He would become one of the founding fathers of the group of iconoclasts who called themselves the “Neo-Realists’ to describe the ‘new reality’ of the world around them. By 1970, however, Manansala was flushed with success. He was not only the recipient of an armful of awards, (including the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1963 and the Araw ng Maynila award in 1970). His one-man shows would attract thousands of guests on opening night and the entire show — usually of 40 paintings — would be snapped up in a matter of minutes according to newspaper reports. He was undoubtedly one of the immortals among the “Thirteen Moderns’ of his once and future mentor, Victorio Edades. And yet, in 1970, he chose to create a second Madonna — this time writing it on the top of the painting in his own hand in red — Madonna No. 2. In this painting, the magnificent heir to that first, legendary Madonna of the Slums, our female protagonist is now dressed in the deep blue of the Philippine flag, the shoulder strap of her camisole dips beneath her shoulder, her back turned, to suggest she is suckling her baby at her breast. On the left is a large jeroboam of liquid covered with a white cloth — it echoes the white square sheet hanging on a clothesline in the original “Madonna of the Slums”, which Manansala first used as an intriguing device. On the right is a ‘gasera’, a gas lamp used in the poorer neighborhoods without electricity, standing on a scarlet hub. The shadows and shapes that play around it are in white, suggesting the national tri-color, a shorthand that this is also our nation’s condition. Manansala had several sides to his art : The first being the abstracts produced under the aegis of the legendary Philippine Art Gallery. The second was his turns at a Filipino cubism, influenced by his interest in stained glass techniques and butterfly collection. Both of these facets were used to take careful aim at the Filipino condition, from life in the slums to queuing for rice rations to the narratives of candle vendors and vegetable hawkers; and speaking its truth in all its beauty.