Ang Mga Ulila
signed and dated 1952 (lower right)
oil on canvas
20" x 16" (51 cm x 41 cm)

León Gallery wishes to thank Mrs. Sylvia Amorsolo-Lazofor confirming the authenticity of this lot.
PROVENANCE: Private collection, Spain



WRITE UP:
In Ang Mga Ulila, Amorsolo reprises a subject of the same title, published in Alfredo Roces' 1975 monograph Amorsolo. The piece is now deemed lost, as pertinent data about its existence has yet to be recovered; only a photo of the anguish-filled composition exists, drawn from Amorsolo's photo collection of his works and reproduced in the Roces monograph. 1952's Ang Mga Ulila is a "one-of-a-kind work," a rare relic of that lost masterpiece. There has indeed been no peacetime ever since the Second World War concluded, as National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin writes in the opening spiels of the 1982 Filipino classic film Oro, Plata, Mata. "So vast now seems the difference between what we have become and what we were before disaster struck that, in the Philippine vernacular term, "peacetime" means exclusively all the years before December 8, 1941," writes Joaquin. "There has been no "peacetime" since then." Tormented by the war, Fernando Amorsolo possessed a lingering trauma, which would become an unabating catharsis translated into oil and canvas. During the war, Amorsolo, then living in a house along Calle Azcarraga (now Recto Avenue) and near the Far Eastern University that became a Japanese garrison, struggled to find his way toward providing sustenance for himself and his family. The University of the Philippines had closed down due to the Japanese occupation, and Amorsolo temporarily lost his teaching and directorship jobs. He would also beg for commissions and sales for his paintings, and as Roces puts it in his monograph: "Art collector Don Luis Araneta recounted how Amorsolo would come to his office with a small landscape and ask, somewhat hesitantly, if he could possibly get P30.00 for the work." But there remained within Amorsolo a sense of social responsibility; he would depict the horrors and violence of the war, no matter how painful. With his collection of up-to-date newspapers, "Amorsolo painted his pictures of the war with no interest in pleasing his customers…He must have reacted to the need to record the chaos around him," Roces writes. He also adds that since Amorsolo was diabetic, "the war years made medication extremely difficult." "Businessman Chick Parsons recounted that right after the Battle of Manila, he traveled about on motor scooter bringing drugs for the sick. Among those in need of insulin was painter Amorsolo, whom Parsons found lying in bed in a dim corner of his studio." Years after the war had ended, Amorsolo would continue to paint its harrowing images, somewhat a form of emotional and mental amelioration and a profound protracted cleansing of the inner psyche. It was as if Amorsolo was "vomiting" all his agonizing memories and "peeling off" all the scarring ordeals of the war. This is exemplified in this 1952 piece. A mother clutches her infant while her young daughter tightly holds onto her yellow skirt. The child's face is filled with fear, anguish, suffering—and defiance. Burnt ruins lay behind them, helplessly standing still from the catastrophe of war, a stark reminder of a landscape once filled with the rosy promises of every passing morning. The family struggles towards an elusive path to survival as they exhaustingly escape from likely death and the ensuing carnage. Amorsolo's dalaga—now a tormented mother—has been stripped of her penetrating innocence, quaint charm, and graceful femininity. A cross lays on the ground, facing directly upon the dreary heavens. It is a grim reminder of the Divine's seeming absence amid His people's suffering and death in those "three fateful years without God." During the year Amorsolo painted this work, he would retire from the directorship of the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts and focus solely on painting, possessing the luxury of time for moral recuperation from the seething rage of the preceding decade. (Adrian Maranan)