PROPERTY FROM THE ZITA FELICIANO COLLECTION

Provenance: The Luz Gallery

Exhibited: Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 6th Paris Biennale, October 2 - November 2, 1969

Literature: Flores, Patrick D. BenCab: Filipino Artist. Benguet: BenCab Art Foundation, Inc., 2019. Full color photograph on page 90 and painting description on page 99.

ABOUT THE WORK

Towards the end of the 1960s, Benedicto Cabrera had been slowly emerging as one of the country’s most promising young artists. In 1968, Bencab would be discovered by Arturo Luz, and would eventually include him in the exhibition “Young Artists 1968,” an annual event for up-and-coming artists held at The Luz Gallery. It was at that event that Bencab formally launched his career. Also, in 1968, Bencab became the Philippine representative to the Tokyo Biennale. By 1969, Bencab would come in full force. Along with fellow artists and peers Virgilio “Pandy” Aviado and Lamberto Hechanova, Bencab would represent the country in the historic 6th Paris Biennale, bringing with him a set of hard-edge, spray painted works. Exhibiting in the renowned and highly competitive global art capital meant Bencab had begun cementing his stature in Philippine art. Among Bencab’s entries to the Paris Biennale was this exact work at hand, Imaginary Portrait of Sabel II. The piece is one in Bencab’s trilogy of “Imaginary Portraits of Sabel.” Leon Gallery has had the privilege of previously offering the other two (both were sold in the Asian Cultural Council Auctions, albeit in different years: 2017 and 2022). Imaginary Portrait of Sabel II completes the trifecta of Bencab’s unique take on his iconic subject. Interestingly, Sabel’s image also gave Bencab his first serious recognition in the local art scene. It was 1966, during Bencab’s debut solo exhibition held at Gallery Indigo on Mabini Street in Ermita, Manila, where Bencab introduced the harrowing image of a scavenger woman he first discovered and observed from the window of his Bambang house in Santa Cruz, Manila. Imaginary Portrait of Sabel II epitomizes that exciting shift in Bencab’s madwoman and his art in general during the late 1960s. From the social realist-expressionist scavenger of the mid to late 1960s, Bencab aggressively strips off Sabel with his trademark crude ensemble and imbues her with an enigmatic aura in line with his newfound visual language of hard-edge painting. The work now appeals both to the viewer’s perception and interpretation and espouses the artist’s more fluid personal expression. We see a coalescence of red and white, with the bodily structure of Sabel distinguishable in the protruding white form that represents her head. The red configuration constitutes her voluminous garments. The work adheres to hard-edge painting, characterized by its economy and sharpness of forms and clean, clear edges separating colors that produce a flat textural and pictorial surface. By the 1960s, hard-edge painting had become a trend in the United States, with its proponents decrying the overt expressiveness of action painting. In 1970, a year after the work at hand, Bencab would be among the first recipients of the inaugural edition of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award, given to “the country’s most active, most aggressively ambitious talents…who have gained considerable maturity and recognition…a new generation [of artists] that promises to dominate Philippine art of the Seventies.” And so, like a good foreshadowing, Bencab would bewilder Philippine art through his now iconic, thought-provoking Larawan Series of 1972. The real-life Sabel died in 1972, three years after the creation of this work. (A.M.)