Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist

ABOUT THE WORK

Hernando R. Ocampo became famous as the ringleader of the ‘Neo-Realist’ group of painters who sought to express the new modern reality with their abstract art. The other artists were Cesar Legaspi (said to be HR’s closest friend), Vicente Manansala, Victor Oteyza, as well as the young turks Romeo Tabuena and film director Ramon Estella. They regarded as their spiritual leaders, Victorio Edades and Carlos V. Francisco. H.R. Ocampo’s biographer Angel G. de Jesus has always claimed that “Ocampo and Edades are the 2 real pioneers of the Philippine Modernist movement". H.R. would make headlines as the 1st-prize winner of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) influential competition in 1951 — in the glory days of the Philippine Art Gallery, which he would helm in the absence of its founder Lyd Arguilla. Ocampo would return triumphantly for another AAP first-prize in 1969, the year “Bon Vivant” was created. That work was called “Circle” which, more or less, describes the path that H.R.’s career had taken over a single decade. Writing in 1978, on the occasion of a monumental retrospective for his friend at the Museum of Philippine Art, de Jesus also took the occasion to write in detail on the subject of H.R. Ocampo’s distinctive and famous use of color. “Although his color theories have been ascribed to Josef Albers, an authority in color relations who painted pure geometric abstractions and taught experimental design at Bauhaus, there is a uniqueness in Ocampo’s color which many familiar with Western art have remarked on. It has been variously described as iridescent, sumptuous, glaring, and — above all — Oriental".