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Leo Cloma
Jose Joya: Amihan Landscape
Jose Joya (1931-1995)
Amihan Landscape
signed and dated 1953 (lower left)
oil on canvas
13” x 16” (33 cm x 41 cm)

Opening bid: P 300,000

This piece is accompanied by a certificate

issued by Mrs. Josefa Joya-Baldovino
confirming the authenticity of this lot

Provenance:
Museum of Philippine Art
Acquired directly from the artist by the
present owner
Exhibited:
Museum of Philippine Art, “Jose Joya, A 20-
year
Retrospective”, Manila

Lot 92 of the Leon Gallery Auction on 9 June

2018. Please see leon-gallery.com/ for more
details.

This work is a key painting as it typifies the

model and dominant image of the Philippine
genre for several generations. It also shows
the Amorsolo School at its best and freshest.
Yet it is a 1953 work by Jose Joya. Following
the example of the Amorsolo School, Joya
chose the drama of the land and the simple
pursuits of its people on the subject of their
work.

Joya’s body of work is divided into two major

groups. One group is famously the evolving
abstractions that made Joya put the
Philippines on the world map of
contemporary art. Another group of Joya’s
advocates a symbolic return to one’s roots, to
the uncomplicated life of people living in the
countryside.

Every painting is an expression of its time.

And this key painting was an expression of a
time, the year 1953, which was just before
Joya was to go to the United States to further
his creative path.

From the mid 1950s through most of the 60s,

abstract expressionism found an able
exponent in Jose Joya (magna cum laude,
University of the Philippines, 1953, and later,
Smith Mundt Fulbright Scholar, Cranbrook
Academy of Art, 1957.

As early as 1953, there had been “The First

Non Objective Art” show at the PAG including
works by Hernando R Ocampo, Nena Saguil,
Zobel, Aguinaldo, Oteyza, writers Fidel de
Castro and Conrado Pedroche, and Joya, and
then a budding fine artist.

Yet amid all these developments, it was also

in 1953 when former UP department of
History Professor Emeritus Isagani R Medina,
then a college mate of Jose Joya in the same
graduation year commissioned the artist to do
a painting for him with the intention of giving
it as a gift to an American friend. Isagani
Medina's ties with the Joya family run even
deeper than college graduation.

Jose Joya and his sister Josefa (Josie) Joya

were his his high school batchmates in at the
Mapa High School where they all graduated
together in 1949.

The fact that the recipient of the work was an

American must have been the reason why the
style was “a la Amorsolo”. The subject being
unmistakably Filipino, and any American
would surely appreciate the visual theme. To
escape the choleric atmosphere of the cities
they further developed, such as Manila, they
fixed their eyes to a world much to their liking,
under opalescent skies, thus emerged the art
of Philippine rural views, a genre which had
never been considered in isolation.

Ever since Philippine countryside genre

became the favored theme during the
American period, the ideal of “natural nobility”
was a persisting ideal in painting In an age
that was what we will call “realistic about
things” in its daily philosophy, realistic genre
painting flourished over a range as wide as
the century’s own attitude toward the daily
world and its understanding of human life.

In 1978 Joya was quoted: “the Filipino people

in particular, remains central to my thinking. I
do not aim to explode the myth about
abstract artists as being escapists and with
marginal drawing skills. Neither will I attempt
their defense. I am not at all embarrassed and
have no apologies to make. On the contrary,
figure drawings occupy me privately in noting
an imaginary visual diary. Joya found an
inexhaustible source of inspiration Arcadian
scenes, in style strongly reminiscent of Corot
and the Barbizon school. This lyricism in his
landscape is immediately apparent when
compared to almost any of his abstracts,
which seethe with dramatic tension.

Through Joya’s bucolic rural scape one

begins to see nature’s thousand fold moods
and gifts. Space is the dramatizing and
unifying component in this agreeable
composition. It has charm rather than power,
pleasant rather than profound, touching
rather than moving. In 1983 Amihan
Landscape was loaned by Isagani Medina to
Jose Joya for the later’s 30th year
Retrospective show held at the Museum of
Philippine Art (Mopa) in June of that year.

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Leo Cloma 2y
Sold on auction for PHP 7,592,000.

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Taken on May 22, 2018

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