Bencab’s 1964 painting and one of his earliest works, Fishing Village in Sasmuan, is a highlight in Leon Gallery’s The Kingly Treasures Auction 2025 on Dec. 6, 2025, Saturday, 2 pm.
The auction caps the 15th anniversary celebration of the country’s eminent auction house.
By mid-1960s, Benedicto Cabrera, the National Artist who would be known as BenCab, earned his livelihood as illustrator for publications and institutions. Bencab had just dropped out of the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts months before he could earn his Fine Arts degree, major in Illustration.
A young Bencab at his USIS desk, ca. 1965. (From the book BENCAB by Krip Yuson and Cid Reyes)
In 1963, Bencab quit college and landed a job in Liwayway Magazine, as illustrator along with Ang Kiukok and Alfredo Roces. Bencab quit Liwayway after three months to work as layout artist for the United States Information Service (USIS) upon the suggestion of his brother, Salvador “Bading” Cabrera, one of the key Mabini artists of the ’50s and the ’60s. Bading’s friend, Bes Nievera, was quitting, leaving the layout artist job open for Bencab. The USIS stint was Bencab’s first full-time job.
It proved fortuitous. During this time, he met Virgilio “Pandy” Aviado and Marciano “Mars” Galang, with whom he would forge an enduring friendship strengthened by the arts. (Aviado, Galang, Bencab mounted a three-man exhibition at the Art Association of the Philippines Gallery at the Unesco Building in Herran, now Pedro Gil, Street from Aug. 30 to Sept. 14, 1965.)
Aviado and Galang were instrumental in Bencab’s transition from illustration to painting. The trio would often go, author Krip Yuson wrote in the book BENCAB, “on on-the-spot sketching and painting excursions around Manila, mostly by the seawall off Luneta, rendering boats and ships on paper and canvas, or at the Binondo district with its network of esteros or canals, to document the shantytowns that flanked both banks.”
Young Bencab photographed by Romy Vitug (From the book ‘Bencab: Filipino Artist’)
Bencab frequented the towns along Manila Bay, most notably the town of Sasmuan in Pampanga. His parents, Isabel Reyes and Democrito Cabrera, hailed from Sasmuan, a coastal town of interconnected patches of wetland surrounded by fishponds and crisscrossed by rivers and streams flowing to Manila Bay. The Sasmuan Pampanga Coastal Wetlands, in the downstream of the Pasac-Guagua Watershed that drains into Manila Bay, were designated “Ramsar site”—an internationally and critically important wetland site—in February 2021 by the “Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat.”
Aerial view of fishing community in Barangay Mabuanbuan, Sasmuan, Pampanga (© https://news.iwlearn.net/the-women-of-sasmuan-sustaining-life-alongthe-river)
For centuries, the Sasmuan townsfolk belonged to the sole municipality in Pampanga that was fully dependent economically and socially on fishing and aquaculture. Sasmuan is a wetland dotted by mangroves and teeming with aquatic diversity: tilapia, bangus, sugpo, talangka, palos, balanak, alupihang dagat, blue swimming crabs, lobsters, oysters, and mussels. Today food processing, such as crab paste production, has become a source of income for many families.
‘Fishing Village,’ 1965, acrylic on canvas (From the book ‘Bencab: Filipino Artist’)
‘Fishing Village in Sasmuan,’ 1966, acrylic on canvas, Paul McCartney Collection, London (Reproduced from the book ‘BENCAB’)
One of Bencab’s earliest works, Fishing Village in Sasmuan, was inspired by a visit to his hometown. This was in the mid-1960s. Bencab’s occasional travels to Sasmuan inspired his works of fishing villages with houses on stilts and fishponds—the folk’s livelihood.
This painting to go on the block marks one of the early instances Bencab signed his works, “Bencab.” He started using “Bencab” in 1964 “to avoid confusion with other painters named Cabrera,” most notably his older brother, Bading. By this time, Bencab was already moving in Manila’s literary and cultural circles that included art critic Leonidas Benesa, who influenced Bencab to join the AAP. In 1964, Bencab, with his “Kuya Bading” and friends Edgar Soller and Bal Magallona, established Sining Gallery on Mabini Street in Manila, affiliating Bencab with the Mabini Art Movement.
Fishing Village in Sasmuan not only offers glimpses into Bencab’s artistic beginnings but also an homage to his hometown and an act of elevating the common folk and the marginalized members of society, who would find themselves the subjects of Bencab’s works. Interestingly, the same year he painted this work, Bencab started observing and sketching the scavenger “Sabel” from his window in his home in Bambang, Manila.
Bencab’s heritage and ancestors are rooted in a community of proud and zealous fisherfolk. He grew up in the lower middle-class district of Santa Cruz, Manila, and Fishing Village in Sasmuan is a testament to Bencab being both an “Anak Sasmuan” (Son of Sasmuan) and “A Son of the People.”—Adrian Maranan
The Kingly Treasures Auction is happening on Dec. 6, 2025, 2pm, at Eurovilla 1, Rufino Corner Legazpi Streets, Legazpi Village, Makati City. Preview week runs from 29 November to 05 December 2025, from 9 am to 7 pm. For further inquiries, email info@leon-gallery.com or contact +632 8856-27-81. To browse the catalog, visit www.leon-gallery.com.
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