Provenance: Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

ABOUT THE WORK

Arturo Luz’s cast of characters—from circus folk, horn players, and fiddlers to unicyclists—inhabit a stark world, pared down to its simplest metaphors, animated only now and then, by sculptural blocks of color. His acrobats, musical instruments, and bicycles have been objects of fascination since the 1960s, perhaps because they demonstrate most of the power of the unseen, creating an invisible dialogue with sound and motion. Schooled first by Pedro Amorsolo and then at the University of Santo Tomas and other academies in New York and Paris, Luz has described himself as “semirepresentational and semi-abstract.” Trio Performing contains the rigorous shorthand that Luz has developed in his particular geometric language. Instead of the signature color blocks, however, he has used molted black on steel gray. Arturo R. Luz was named Philippine National Artist for Visual Arts in 1997.