Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

While there is a sense of cosmic drama about many of the paintings of Nena Saguil, they lead one into a meditative mood. Painted in 1961, this work may have encapsulated the sea change happening in her artistic sensibility upon setting foot in the City of Lights. The whirling atmosphere has a rarefied, Buddhist quality about it. In 1977, Nena Saguil was asked: “What does living in Paris mean to you in terms of the company you keep within the art community?” She answered: “Artists in Paris are very particular about the other artists with whom they exhibit. They are very particular too about the gallery where they show as much about the artists as they are shown with. They are very snobbish in Paris. But it is the kind of snobbery we should learn". “It is a snobbery of high standards with regards to the value of one’s work as a work of art. While it is important for an artist to sell his work, it is more important to be accepted for the aesthetic value of that work". As such, with their rigorous, meditative basis, they unfold or spin out wave-like and precise rhythmic articulations, overlapping in parts, agitated at the center, and implying reformulations in space and a discovery of its new potentials.