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Lot Essay
The World Was Once Pollution Free is an exceedingly rare, large-sized and shaped oil on panel composition by Jose Joya. Joya's artistic career has been distinguished by a number of high profile accolades. As an art student he was awarded numerous international grants, in particular a Fulbright scholarship to the influential Cranbrook School of Art in Michigan where he completed his Master's Degree in Painting in 1956. He later became the President of the Art Association of the Phlippines (AAP) from 1962 - 1965, and the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines between 1970- 1978. In 1987, he was awarded Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
Joya's masterful abstract works are characterized by a deep sense of spirituality. His works bear calligraphic brushwork and floating amorphous shapes, often punctuated by gestural, linear strokes and textural splashes of paint. Joya has a particular affinity to the quality of translucence within his creations, often layering filmy gradations of paint or collaging rice paper elements on to his canvas in order to create the desired effects.
Within the late 1960s to early 70s, Joya's works underwent a visual shift - from heavy impasto and dynamic, occasionally impatient energy, his abstract renditions became softer, more fluid and meditative. His themes were often of landscapes, yet the depicted shapes were impressionistic, rounded, ephemeral, and reminiscent of floating continents and plateaus; rather than realistic representations of particular scenes. The World Was Once Pollution Free is Joya's vision of the earth as a pristine utopia, portrayed in in warm shades of sea-foam green, blue, and gold paint.
This present artwork is one of the most spectacular Joya works to be presented at auction, and was formerly from the collection of American hotelier Donald Pritzker.
Joya's masterful abstract works are characterized by a deep sense of spirituality. His works bear calligraphic brushwork and floating amorphous shapes, often punctuated by gestural, linear strokes and textural splashes of paint. Joya has a particular affinity to the quality of translucence within his creations, often layering filmy gradations of paint or collaging rice paper elements on to his canvas in order to create the desired effects.
Within the late 1960s to early 70s, Joya's works underwent a visual shift - from heavy impasto and dynamic, occasionally impatient energy, his abstract renditions became softer, more fluid and meditative. His themes were often of landscapes, yet the depicted shapes were impressionistic, rounded, ephemeral, and reminiscent of floating continents and plateaus; rather than realistic representations of particular scenes. The World Was Once Pollution Free is Joya's vision of the earth as a pristine utopia, portrayed in in warm shades of sea-foam green, blue, and gold paint.
This present artwork is one of the most spectacular Joya works to be presented at auction, and was formerly from the collection of American hotelier Donald Pritzker.