An Early Work from Alcuaz’s Coveted Barcelona Period
In 1955, Federico Aguilar Alcuaz traveled to Spain, armed with a study grant from the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs made possible through the intervention and recommendation of the great Fernando Zobel, who was greatly impressed by the works of the then-23-year-old Alcuaz, which were exhibited at the Philippine Art Gallery earlier that year. (It signaled his debut not only at the legendary gallery but into the dynamic post-war Philippine art scene.)
Alcuaz would enroll at the famed Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, following in the footsteps of Luna, Hidalgo, De la Rosa, and Amorsolo.
Alcuaz would soon transfer to sunny Barcelona. It would be the trip of a lifetime, both literally and figuratively, as Alcuaz would not only paint a name of his own in Barcelona but would make the city his home base, setting up his own studio on the fourth floor of 285 Calle de Aragon, maintaining that place as the nucleus of his artistic base for forty years—from July 1957 until August 1997.
He would also find romance in Barcelona in the bewitching person of the then-19-year-old Ute Gisela Gertrud Schmitz, a German working at a Spanish trading company, all the while pursuing commerce and languages. The two first met in 1957, around the time of Alcuaz’s solo exhibition at Galerias Manila. Federico and Ute would tie the knot on September 22, 1959, and their love would bear three sons: Christian Michael, Andreas Frederic, and Wolfgang Matthias.
In Barcelona, Alcuaz became associated with the “La Puñalada,” one of the city’s most “rebellious” groups of artists who frequently convened, conversed, and debated at the La Puñalada, a restaurant serving Catalan-French haute cuisine located at Paseo de Gràcia, dubbed “Barcelona’s most expensive street” and known for being a prime cultural, entertainment, and business district. Alicia Coseteng writes in “The Transition to Maturity” chapter of the all-important monograph on Philippine art, Art Philippines:
“[Alcuaz] fell in with the members of the La Puñalada group… founded by Rusinol, Casas, and Picasso—the rebel leaders against the Salon artists. Alcuaz and his contemporaries, [Jaume] Muxart, [Sergio] Aragones, and [Jordi] Aluma, began to identify themselves with the neofigurative movement, by then gathering momentum in France, Italy, and Spain. They became the Spanish “neofiguratives,” following in the spirit of the great Spaniard—Picasso.” With this fortuitous encounter—and away from the confines of conservatism, which he first acquired in his studies at the UP School of Fine Arts, then helmed by the all-powerful pack of conservatives rooted in the romantic pastoral: Amorsolo, Miranda, Herrera, and Tolentino—Alcuaz geared towards a style in which somber colors echoing a brooding atmosphere and strokes highlighted by thick, heavy impastos result in an expressiveness grounded on the La Puñalada’s attack against the Spanish formalists, who heavily relied on the plastic elements of art, altogether shunning the human figure, natural forms, everyday lived experiences, and “the objective world of nature,” as Coseteng puts it.
Alcuaz’s newfound creative spirit and artistic association with the La Puñalada is discerned in this 1957 work at hand. Alcuaz depicts a band of men seated among each other, indulging in a sumptuous feast and chugging a drink or seven. (Could these be Alcuaz and his comrades outside at La Puñalada after a night feasting on grub, intoxicated with booze, and wild about art?) Alcuaz emphasizes figuration through the subjects’ bulky physical forms emphasized by rounded contours, albeit there is a deliberate blurring of the figures’ facial features. One can also discern vestiges of Cezanne’s influence in this work (Cezanne was one of Alcuaz’s foremost luminaries).
Alcuaz painted the work at hand the same year he won the first prize at Barcelona’s Premio Moncada. It was the first award he received during his Barcelona years.
The painting at hand is also an exceptional rarity, for it is among the first works by Alcuaz, in which he affixed his signature as “Aguilar Alcuaz.” Ovit Aguilar, Federico’s elder brother, writes in the artist’s chronology published in Paras-Perez’s monograph that their “father got really furious…when he [Federico] sent a newspaper clipping mentioning him as “Alcuaz” and not “Aguilar.” Ovit continues, “[Federico] was able to pacify our father by explaining that he used his maternal name because there were too many Aguilars in Spain.”
“It was the custom in Spain that the maternal surname usually came [first]—Federico Aguilar y Alcuaz. For convenience, the “y” was dropped so that his name would come out as ‘Federico Aguilar Alcuaz.’ This our father did not readily accept or understand.” (Adrian Maranan)
PROPERTY FROM THE DON J. ANTONIO ARANETA COLLECTION
León Gallery wishes to thank Christian M. Aguilar for confirming the authenticity of this lot