Romulo Olazo (Filipino, 1934-2015)Diaphanous #260
1981

signed and dated 81
oil on canvas laid on board

61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in)注脚Provenance
Printmakers Art Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan
Private Collection, Asia

Exhibited
Taipei, Printmakers Art Gallery, Romulo Olazo: Oil Paintings, 1981

Romulo Olazo
明澈#260
油彩畫布裱於木板
1981年作

簽名: Olazo 81

來源
台北版畫家畫廊
亞洲私人收藏

展覽
「Romulo Olazo：Oil Paintings」, 台北Printmakers Art Gallery, 1981年

The Diaphanous works are the single most significant body of works for the Philippine modern artist, Romulo Olazo. Stretching our four decades and more than 20,000 studies, sketches and paintings, the extended series Olazo titled Diaphanous is not only the artist's most significant and recognised body of work, but also a defining body of work in the history of modern abstract art in Philippines and in Asia.

With the Diaphanous extended series, Olazo strove for immateriality, transparency, and a quality of in-betweenness. 'Reading' these works for meaning, or finding meaning with references in reality become a futile effort, especially as one considers that they have been created with the intent and focus of an artist totally absorbed in resolving and attaining a particular visual appearance. The state of suspension, even a spectral look is what Olazo spent the better part of his artistic career pursuing. Layers and layers of screens create what Philippine art critic Cid Reyes describes as a 'whispery fusion of matter and illusion'.

In the 1960s, Olazo was a successful commercial art director at an advertising firm, and only left his job in 1974 in a decisive step to pursue the life of an artist wholly. In a couple of decades, he then established himself as one of the leading artists of his generation. He worked across painting and print-making, mastering the gamut of print forms, from woodcut to etching, serigraph, silkscreen and collograph, and expertly combining both painting and printmaking in his major series, Diaphanous and Permutation. The present lot was painted and exhibited in 1981 in the artist's first overseas exhibition ever, held in Taiwan where he exhibited slightly more than a dozen Diaphanous paintings.