Provenance: Paseo Gallery, Makati City

Exhibited: Ayala Museum ArtistSpace, Diaphanous-Anthuriums, Organized by Paseo Gallery, Makati City, October 12 - 25, 2012

ABOUT THE WORK

From Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh to Georgia O’Keeffe, a lot of the finest painters were enamored with flowers, which they depicted in unique variations and with ardor and gusto, some also with devotion. Whether as still lifes or as decorative elements in domestic interiors, flowers bloom in the brilliantly painted canvases of figurative artists. As well, Filipino artists are not immune to the seduction of flowers, even the abstractionist maestro Romulo Olazo. Diaphanous Anthuriums #92, done in oil, is a piece that reminds of the day when the artist, having arrived from a painting session with the Saturday Group of Artists, brought to his wife an armful of anthuriums. The romantic event paved the way for a new theme in the art of Olazo. His anthurium paintings were executed at first as a realistic still life and then rendered with his signature Diaphanous approach, flattened but still retaining its distinctly recognizable heart shape, a shape that evokes the universal emotion of love. For Olazo, the anthurium was the favored flower that moved his heart. (P.I.R.)