Procession

The possibilities that were afforded to Vicente Manansala as a painter were endless. He did not allow a genre tradition or himself to affix boundaries to the growing magnitude of his work. He paid homage to the legacy of Cubism but he did not let this veneration retard his courage to place it within an indigenous context that would be accessible to all Filipinos. The Procession arouses the attention of the viewer through its kaleidoscope of mosaic-like placement of figures that swirl in this festive ambience. The high viewpoint allows Manansala to assess the energy of the crowd from a general viewpoint where the viewer is the see-all and be-all of the scene. The sense of human integration and fusion churn this vortex of life into a clockwise spiral. Obviously, there is no particularisation of the figures and at most they exist as stick-figures. However it is through their unity as faceless sketches, that they draw their strength through their cohesion.