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Lot Essay
The present sculpture exemplifies the sweet face of Anita's protagonists who is the hallmark of the artist's oeuvre. The early paintings of Anita depict women in angular forms and edgy geometric shapes who gather and exchange in bustling activity of daily routines. However, by 1970s the artist had evolved the facial features of her women, no longer were the features abbreviated but more detailed and refined with the almond-shaped eyes and full cheeks.
"During the late seventies and early eighties, the artist begins to paint large half-figures, the movement diverted to small but powerful nods of exchange and acknowledgment. The pictorial field is entirely occupied by women surrounded by baskets, fruits, or tamed birds hopping around them. It is the artist in her most detailed style, having shed her earlier spontaneity to achieve a new refinement of form. Anita Magsaysay-Ho has, in such works as Madonna with the Birds completely departed from her earlier angular and vigorous style influenced by American gestural expressionism of the fifties to discover exquisiteness in the quiet and serenity of the women. Instead of making broad gestures, they now choose to be modest and circumspect, and the upraised hands with the long fingers set close together have a quintessential Asian quality, their eyes half-closed as though in communication with their inner selves." (Alice Guerrero Guillermo, "A Woman's Journey to selfhood in Art" in Anita Magsaysay-Ho: A Retrospective, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Manila, 1989, p.20). The critic's comments aptly described the works of the artist from the seventies which is superbly embodies in features and in essence by the present sculpture.
"During the late seventies and early eighties, the artist begins to paint large half-figures, the movement diverted to small but powerful nods of exchange and acknowledgment. The pictorial field is entirely occupied by women surrounded by baskets, fruits, or tamed birds hopping around them. It is the artist in her most detailed style, having shed her earlier spontaneity to achieve a new refinement of form. Anita Magsaysay-Ho has, in such works as Madonna with the Birds completely departed from her earlier angular and vigorous style influenced by American gestural expressionism of the fifties to discover exquisiteness in the quiet and serenity of the women. Instead of making broad gestures, they now choose to be modest and circumspect, and the upraised hands with the long fingers set close together have a quintessential Asian quality, their eyes half-closed as though in communication with their inner selves." (Alice Guerrero Guillermo, "A Woman's Journey to selfhood in Art" in Anita Magsaysay-Ho: A Retrospective, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Manila, 1989, p.20). The critic's comments aptly described the works of the artist from the seventies which is superbly embodies in features and in essence by the present sculpture.