PROPERTY FROM THE DR. AND MRS. VICTOR REYES COLLECTION

Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist

ABOUT THE WORK

Vicente Manansala was the first Filipino artist who took a keen interest in the image of the slums. Manansala had personally experienced the hardships of war. He succumbed to producing portrait after portrait from commissions in exchange for money to buy rice grains, even mixing hardened paint with coconut oil whenever his supplies ran out. After the war, Manansala lived in the slums of Reina Regente in Binondo while working as a staff artist for The Evening News. The September 28, 1958 issue of This Week Magazine notes: "It was here that he got the idea for the barong-barong paintings, which started a trend in Philippine painting...It was also here that his nationalistic feeling was aroused...." As such, Manansala facilitated himself with utmost empathy and compassion in depicting pieces of post-war realities. In an interview with Christina Lopa in 1979, the artist says: “...I have compassion for the poor…I understand what it is like to have nothing. I experienced that.” In another interview, this time with Cid Reyes in 1973 and published in his landmark Conversations on Philippine Art, Manansala remarks: “I am not an intellectual. I am a peasant. I do not paint from the mind. I paint from the heart!” The barong-barong in the work at hand is unmistakable, compellingly showing its harsh realities. Manansala captures the congestion in the slums and the shambolic consolidation of salvaged materials using a one-point perspective. The solitary atmosphere of the work conveys the grievances of its inhabitants, who had once hoped for betterment but were abandoned and became victims to the deceptive promises of post-war regimes, which remained chained to the interests of their former colonial masters. Manansala's refusal to kowtow to Western Cubism and its disintegration of forms manifests his resolute humanization of the poverty-stricken, especially in the post-war milieu's anxious and frail socio-economic conditions. In doing so, he maintains that the right of the impoverished to live in dignity is inviolable. This gripping depiction of unadulterated reality struck Dr. Victor Reyes, a humanitarian who joined in serving the poorest of Africa. One can also easily imagine this work as the setting of his seminal 1950 work, Madonna of the Slums. Manansala's earlier iterations of his barong-barong gave him several nods, including First Prize for "Barung-barong No. 1" and Honorable Mention for "Barung-barong No. 2" at the Manila Grand Opera House Exhibition for the Art Association of the Philippines in 1950. The work at hand goes on a similar trajectory; it encapsulates Manansala at the peak of his creative powers. By this time, he had been bestowed the Republic Cultural Heritage Award (1963), the forerunner to the National Artist Award. (A.M.)