LIFE AND

WORKS OR
VICENTE SILVA
MANANSALA
LIFE OF VICENTE SILVA MANANSALA
Manansala was born in Macabebe, Pampanga on
January 22, 1910. He was the second of the eight
children of Perfecto Q. Manansala and Engracia Silva.

He studied at the U.P. School of Fine Arts. In 1949,

Manansala received a six-month grant by UNESCO to
study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Banff and
Montreal, Canada. In 1950, he received a nine-month
scholarship to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in
Paris by the French government.

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Manansala's canvases were described as
masterpieces that brought the cultures of the
barrio and the city together. His "Madonna of
the Slums" is a portrayal of a mother and
child from the countryside who became urban
shanty residents once in the city. In his
"Jeepneys", Manansala combined the
elements of provincial folk culture with the
congestion issues of the city.

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Vicente Manansala studied at the
University of the Philippines
.

School of Fine Art until 1930. He

later received a UNESCO
fellowship to study at the École des
Beaux-Arts in Paris.

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Manansala developed transparent
cubism, wherein the "delicate tones,
shapes, and patterns of figure and
environment are masterfully
superimposed." A fine example of
Manansala using this "transparent and
translucent" technique is his
composition, "Kalabaw (Carabao)."
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Manansala’s vision of the city and his fundamentally
native Filipino approach to his subjects would
influence numerous artists who took up his folk
themes within an urban context. Among those who
show his influence are Mauro Malang Santos, with his
own version of folk romanticism in paintings which
convey the fragile, makeshift character of the 1950s,
and others from the University of Santo Tomas where
Manansala taught for a time, such as Antonio Austria,
Angelito Antonio, and Mario Parial

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 “
Manansala worked as an illustrator for the
Philippines Herald and Liwayway and as a layout
artist for Photo news and Saturday Evening News
Magazine in the 1930’s. He held his first one-man
show at the Manila Hotel in 1951, and then went
on to work as a professor at the University of
Santo Tomas School of Fine Arts from 1951 to
1958.

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Vicente Manansala, a National Artist of the
Philippines in Visual Arts, was a direct influence to
his fellow Filipino neo-realists: Malang, Angelito
Antonio, Norma Belleza, and Manuel Baldemor.
The Honolulu Museum of Art, the Lopez
Memorial Museum (Manila), the Philippine
Center (New York City), the Singapore Art
Museum and Holy Angel University (Angeles City,
Philippines) are among the public collections
holding work by Vicente Manansala.

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Holy Angel University recently opened a
section of its museum called "The Vicente
Manansala Collection", holding most of the
estate left by the artist. He died on August
22, 1981 in Manila, Philippines due to lung
cancer.

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Vicente Manansala is known for
fusing the cultures of the barrio
and the city in his paintings. The
best example of this
“transparent and translucent”
technique is his composition
"Kalabaw (Carabao)."

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Manansala won first prize for
Barong-barong $ 1 in the 1950
Manila Grand Opera House
Exhibition. His awards from the Art
Association of the Philippines
include: third prize, Banaklaot,
In 1948; second prize,
Kahi (Scratch) and in 1953,second
prize, Fish Vendors
He received the Republic
Cultural Heritage Award in 1963

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Vicente married Hermenegilda
(Hilda) Diaz, with whom he had
one child.

Father: Perfecto Q. Manansala

Mother: Engracia Silva
Spouse: Hermenegilda (Hilda)
Diaz
Friend: Romeo Tabuena

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 WORKS OF
VICENTE SILVA
MANANSALA
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MARKET VENDOR 1949
Market Vendors, executed in 1949, already
exhibits Manansala's trademark
"transparent cubism" tendencies.
Superimposed facets are scattered
throughout the painting, as if they are
magical tinted glasses, producing a
different hue with each new overlap. A
crowded market scene is the painting's
subject matter and the picture plane is
teeming with activities.

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CANDLE VENDORS 1950
A stunning specimen of Manansala’s
transparent cubism, Candle Vendors
defies all concepts of spatial dimension
through the eyes of the spectator. In
the foreground, three candlestick
vendors are grouped together, line of
sight angled above them as the viewer
looks down at the candles resting on
braided baskets.
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MADONNA OF THE SLUM 1950
It was considered to be a key
modernist painting of that time. The
art style that was used in the painting
is cubism. According to my research,
Manansala developed his own style
in Cubism which is Transparent
Cubism. He used the effects of
transparency in the original cubist
style of Braque and Picasso. The
subject of his artwork is the woman
carrying her child.
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STILL LIFE 1957
Still-life painting emerged as a
distinct genre and professional
specialization in Western painting by
the late 16th century, and has
remained significant since then. One
advantage of the still-life artform is
that it allows an artist much freedom
to experiment with the arrangement
of elements within a composition of a
painting.

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MACHINERY 1962
The late National Artist and cubist
painter Vicente Manansala's 1962
oil painting "Machinery" was sold at
over twice its estimated price in the
2007 Christie's Southeast Asian
Modern and Contemporary Art in
Hong Kong. The painting was
created at the peak of Manansala's
cubist maturity

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MOTHER AND THE CHILD 1965
Mother and Child” is a painting in
cubism style created in 1965. It
portrays a woman sitting on the
floor and holding the child. At the
upper right corner is a vase and
an upside-down red cup. The
woman is wearing a black dress
which is in old style. Her black
hair is unruly. The painting shows
a realistic scene with a contrast
of dark and light colors.
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LANDSCAPE 1966
This wondrous rendition of a rural
landscape, possibly view of
Binangonan, Rizal, combines the
artist’s folk romanticism, with its lyrical
colors and archetypes, and
Manansala’s postwar modernism. This
style is characterized by semi-
figurative transparent cubism where
forms are not simply fragmented for
the sake of formalism, but rather
rendered as sensuous facets that
overlapS.
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STILL LIFE 1967
This entailed the use of cubistic
shapes that, instead of shattering
the image in the manner of
Picasso, delicately defined their
masses as a series of decorative
planes that overlapped and
produced a throbbing, crystalline
effect on its subject, so much so
that Manansala’s style would later
be called Transparent Cubism.

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THE SELLER OF BIRDS 1973
The canvas “The Seller of Birds” is
one of the best compositions of the
Manansala, because it is a
landmark work that influenced the
development of Cubism in the
entire fine arts of Asia. Birds and
barred free-swinging cells intersect,
their colors mix, creating a complex
composition of faceted planes.

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JUMPING OVER THORNS 1973
This present work that
depicts children engaging in
the familiar Filipino game of
'luksong tinik' where the
youthful participants use
their hands to form a spine
of thorns over which another
child has to leap.

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THE MUSICIANS 1973
A musical cadence flows through
The Musicians, recalling an
evocative quote of Manansala's - "I
used bright colors and geometric
shapes to create a melody" . Indeed,
the painting is enlivened not only
with the pleasing combination of form
and a structure that supports and
advances the adaptation of a Cubist
vocabulary

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BEGGARS 1975
Manansala’s sophisticated style of
painting always rendered faces with an
economy of brushwork, and yet
retained their unique character and
pathos. This can be seen in two other
contradictory themes Enteng
Manansala indulged in—the female
nude and the crucified Christ. The first
was as a result of his membership in
the Saturday Group, when artists
banded together during Martial Law
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STILL LIFE WITH FISH AND
WATERMELON 1977
In these charming vignettes of a
day’s meal, National Artist Vicente
Manansala presents his mastery of
the watercolor medium with cubist
compositions of Filipino plates.
Often painting fruit and fish
vendors in his art, these four works
allow viewers a different
perspective of Manansala’s
produce.
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PLANTING RICE 1977
In this painting, originally from the JV Cruz
Collection, Manansala doesn’t throw the
peasant women into sharp relief, a
technique that would only emphasize a
sense of pathos on the hardworking
subjects. Instead , he blends them into the
overall ethereal mood of transparence,
reflection, iridescence, luminous coloring,
opalescence, flowing forms and volumes

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POUNDING RICE 1979
In Pounding Rice, the artist portrays a
group of farmwomen engaged in the
activity of rice pounding, an
agricultural process of dehulling rice
or turning rice into rice flour for food.
Gathered around a simple mortar
carved from a tree stump, Manansala
monumentalizes the three figures in
the center of his canvas, directing the
viewer’s gaze and attention to the
dramatic scene
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SOPHISTICATED FOLK 1980
A newsboy, golf caddy, and bootblack in
his youth, this son of a Macabebe-
based barber carried the tough street
language and garrulous demeanour of
his roughneck childhood in pre-War
Intramuros well into his sunset years in
the seventies, when he was one of the
most financially successful artists of his
generation.

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Still life 1964

Oil on canvas mounted

on plywood

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