ABOUT THE WORK

The late abstractionist Romulo Olazo brought together the dynamism of his diaphanous forms into a singular entity that can be imagined as waves of colors prancing in the mind. Abstraction was Olazo’s tool in permeating the bright hues of color as a symphonic spectacle that bedazzles the eye. Created through the medium of silkscreens, this work is studded with the monochromatic gossamer colors that are fleeting and animated with the shapes and lines becoming dancers prancing off the canvas. The art that brought out his perennial Diaphanous series, a composition that continued throughout his artistic career, was inspired by his fondness towards the luminescent quality of various bodies of water. In this piece, form and color are fused as one in a faint but interlocked relationship, and from their union emanates a disembodied, spectral look. Intriguingly, the rich, dense and complex layers of light—even in works that disport a flourish and flamboyance of forms—never lose their austere quality. Olazo began his career as an artist when the foundations of a modernist tradition were being laid by key figures such as Vicente Manansala, Victorio Edades, H.R. Ocampo, and Fernando Zobel. Olazo first came to the fore as a printmaker who made striking innovations in this field. This fed into the development of his Diaphanous series, a unique body of abstract paintings that “are veritable visions of light. They have been likened to dragonfly wings, sheets of gossamer veil or gauze, and even a symphony.” Olazo always had an impulse toward pristine compositions.