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Many have sung praises for his ebullient colors, his sensuous shapes bursting with “baroque” curves or contours, his brisk, lively strokes. Manansala can compress much of the festive spirit and love of the simple life. The evidence of his best known works is that of a man whose cup runneth over. Welcome to another page in Manansala’s Tales from the Simple Life. Beneath the surface glitter and exuberance can be seen a craftsmanship honed by many years of study of works by Picasso, Braque, and Gris. Yet in each country and in the work of almost each artist under its spell, Cubism assumed a unique form. Within the matrix of Manansala’s Transparent Cubism which he invented, the striped colors and design of the indigenous skirt fabrics are a visual balance to the faceted layering of the colors of the basketry-bearing fruits on top of the women’s heads. It should be added that through the years, Manansala has painted memorable murals: the most sensitive of them being the 14 stations of the Cross on the walls of the Chapel of the Holy Sacrifice in the U.P. Campus; as are in some of the buildings of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, Laguna. They are scenes of work and play and he is pleased with them for their pictorial balance. Is he pleased with them even more because they reflect his inner exuberance? “Perhaps, perhaps,” he was quoted in 1975. His first inspiration and overpowering influence was Botong Francisco, the famous painter and muralist from Angono. Only a few years younger than Francisco, Manasala had a joint exhibit with him in 1939 at an art gallery in Intramuros called Philippine Vistas. It was the 1st commercial art gallery in Manila, pioneered by Ester Aenelle. This was also the 1st art exhibit for the works of Botong Francisco, Manansala then was only 20 and indelibly delighted to be in the company of an artist he much admired and whose zest for Philippine scenes and people he was to match through the years. Manansala was of course influenced by the famous Cubists pioneers of Europe. But it is the folk stance which he shared with Botong which gave and continues to give his paintings their distinct signature, eventually perfecting a “Transparent Cubism” that is all his own. In this short of intimate public scene, Manansala captures the imagery and intrigue of the marketplace, taking the viewer into silent dialogues of stimulation and response. Manansala’s women sit veiled and hunched over their tasks, their brown impassive faces like the archaic bulol, block-like with broad planes, their large bare feet projecting from the hem of their saya. The Cubist aspect of Manansala’s work rests largely on the geometric faceting of forms and in the shifting and overlapping of planes. The great work sums up Manansala’s mastery of figures in space, wherein he puts together the juxtaposed women according to the needs of the composition and welded the simplified planes of the bodies into the picture space. The women's figures are arranged in such a way that the they make a formal composition in the 2-dimensional plane of the canvas, but also has a spatial relationship in depth. It is executed in the Cubist technique of overlapping, strongly colored planes, mostly brilliant blues. Manansala’s facets are always translucent so it can collide and intersect but not interpenetrate. Jewel-like facets of green in the backdrop defines an idyllic situation even if the reality is all about the restless pace of labor in the rural areas. His own type of Cubism never goes too far out as to tear the images apart into bits and pieces like so many jigsaw fragments, the analytical Cubists do. He holds on to whole images, distorting them slightly, simplifying their structures, but never willfully shattering them beyond instant recognition. The Filipino modern idiom Manansala created has proven to be an enduring stimulus to succeeding generations of genre painters like Angelito Antonio, Norma Belleza, Antonio Austria, Mario Parial, Manuel Baldemor, and Lazaro Soriano. His rural pictures, with all their objectivity, revealed a warmth and depth of feeling; he made the 3 depictions of the Mother and Child theme symbols of being unaffected from everyday turmoil. This is one of Manansala’s most delightful paintings, filled with unusual tenderness despite the visual complexity of the subject. The tough resilience of the women with children cradled in their arms is softened by the fiesta-like ebullience of Manansala’s faceted colors. The small transparent facets of color create a glittering, jeweled effect. It is executed in the Synthetic Cubist technique of overlapping, strongly colored planes, although the techniques of his famous teacher Leger are comparatively opaque and so can collide and intersect but not interpenetrate, and their movement defines no static still life situation but communicates the restless pace of life. Through the 1960s, as a leading member of the PAG, Manansala moved on from strength to strength, and already displaying qualities of Pinoy Baroque: a festive spirit, love of image clusters or that fear of emptiness (horror vacui) which compelled the artist to fill every space with busy detail, and flattened perspectives. It also welcomed the decorative element found in folk, popular, and indigenous arts and crafts. Aside from the Mother and Child, both of which are frequent subjects by Manansala, other objects and images almost fill the canvas. Manansala plunged into Cubism but did not let it overwhelm him. He coined a word for the kind of Cubism he eventually perfected as his own: “Transparent Cubism". Manansala reinterpreted or indigenized Cubism as he drew his themes from the familiar Filipino environment. Unlike Analytical Cubism, which arbitrarily fragments and dissects the figure into complex abstract compositions with only clues of the subject remaining, the Cubist aspect of his work rests largely on the geometric faceting of forms and in the shifting and overlapping of planes. The painting shows a suavity of outline and an extraordinary control of the softly formed facets which model the forms. There is always the sense of active rural life continuing behind the subjects, extending outside the frame of the canvas even if left to the imagination. Though Manansala certainly had planned the representation of his chosen subject matter, the abstract vision serves as the starting point. The clear-cut underlying geometric framework of these works seemingly controls the finer elements of the compositions; the constituent components, including the small planes of the faces, become part of the unified whole. The austere, sometimes highly intellectualized style of Cubism emerged from the hands of Manansala as something free and capable of sensuousness. Cubism in France uses objects or images sparingly. Manansala’s objects and images almost fill the canvas. This work shows a greater complexity of geometric structure, a blurring of the distinction between objects and setting, between subject matter and background. The oblique overlapping planar constructions, tending away from equilibrium, are manifest. This work has the freshness and originality of his other paintings of the same theme, showing his mastery of the balance of the figures, and the juxtaposition of colors. Here he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering color. Vicente Manansala has reaped a harvest of awards in his lengthy career. He won 1st prize for Barong-barong $1 in the 1950 Manila Grand Opera House Exhibition. His awards from the Art Association of the Philippines include: 3rd prize, Banaklaot, 1948; 2nd prize, Kahig (Scratch), 1953; 2nd prize, Fish Vendors, 1955; 3rd prize, Best Served, Well-Gained, 1955; 2nd prize, Give Us This Day, 1962; and best in show, Give Us This Day, 1962. He received the Republic Cultural Heritage Award in 1963. He also received the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award from the City of Manila in 1970. He was proclaimed National Artist in Painting in 1982.