‘The Spectacular Mid-Year Auction’ is on June 7, 2025, 2 pm, at Eurovilla 1, Rufino corner Legazpi Streets, Legazpi Village, Makati City. Preview week is from May 31 to June 6, 2025, from 9 am to 7 pm.
Vicente Manansala’s From the Market, which he once said was his favorite masterpiece and which features his self-portrait and a beautiful depiction of his loving wife, Hilda, is a highlight of Leon Gallery’s The Spectacular Mid-Year Auction 2025 on June 7, 2025, Saturday, 2 p.m.
The renowned British psychologist John Charles Turner wrote in 1996: “The self is fundamentally sociological, not biological.” According to Turner, our sense of self is influenced by our association with specific social groups and, therefore, molded into the “collective self.” Thus, the “self” becomes synonymous and intimately inseparable from the “collective.”
The wedding of ‘Mang Enteng’ and ‘Aling Hilda’ on Nov. 7, 1937 in Binondo
Vicente Manansala was always a bold and irreverent gent, with a prankish sense of humor, like an old-fashioned Filipino could always be. But beyond that was a man ingrained with proletarian sensibilities, deeply in touch with his fellow ordinary folk. Growing up in pre-war Intramuros, Manansala experienced the hard life early on; he worked as shoe-shine boy (bootblack), a caddy, a runner of films for movie houses, and a newspaper boy selling copies of La Vanguardia and El Debate Independiente all over Manila.
A proof of Manansala’s deep-seated identity as being one with the masses was his love of sabong (cockfight), a pastime deeply rooted in Philippine tradition and culture. Sabong was prevalent even before Magellan’s arrival, and was in the record of the expedition by chronicler Antonio Pigafetta.
After he graduated from the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts in 1930, Manansala ran away from home after his father castigated him “for keeping a stable of seven fighting cocks,” as recounted in a September 1958 article in This Week magazine.
The Manansala couple at their wedding reception
© Photos reproduced from the book Manansala by Rod. Paras-Perez
Manansala also revealed in a May 1973 interview with Cid Reyes that one of his most beloved subjects was the rooster and the cockfighter, a throwback to his being a sabungero. He said, with his signature sense of humor: “Ah! Yang manok e talagang gustong-gusto ko! Alam mo noong binata ako, sabungero ako! Pero nang mag-asawa ako, tinigilan ko. Alam mo naman, ‘yang manok at asawa e hinding-hindi pwedeng magkasama! (I really love cockfighting. I was a cockfighter as a bachelor, but I had to stop after I got married. As you know, a rooster or cock and a wife can’t go together)”
A young Manansala that strikingly resembles his self-portrait in the painting From the Market. ©
Purita Kalaw Ledesma Foundation Archives
The significance of Manansala’s From the Market lies in the assimilation of this sense of self in our social culture.
From the Market is an interesting Manansala’s oeuvre as it is a self-portrait of the maestro as sabungero, Manansala in the vigor of youth, a handsome man with prominent cheekbones, well-defined jawline, and high-bridged nose.
Beside Manansala is a pregnant woman, the beautiful Aling Hilda (Hermenegilda Diaz Manansala), Mang Enteng’s beloved wife. This intriguing portrait of Manansala and his wife evokes that time when he had to stop cockfighting, heeding the wish of his precious wife whom he diligently courted for seven years. They got married in November 1937—they eloped after Mang Enteng stole a kiss on their first movie date. They would have a son named Emmanuel (born in 1939). In the painting, Aling Hilda seems irked, her gaze away from Mang Enteng, perhaps annoyed at her husband’s “constant craving” for cockfighting. The rooster looks as if with pity on Manansala, as if pleading with Mang Enteng not to leave behind his “side chick.”
“I love the sabungero because I was one,” Manansala admitted in Rod. Paras-Perez’s book on him.
Blurb: ‘I love the sabungero because I was one,’ Manansala proudly expressed in Rod. Paras-Perez’s book on him
The beautiful women vendors, at whom Aling Hilda also looks with apprehension (perhaps in veiled jealousy of Mang Enteng’s flirtatious tendencies?), are reminiscent of Manansala’s proletarian boyhood, when he used to hustle his way in pre-war Manila’s streets to earn a living.
“My painting is a sort of emotional release,” Manansala famously said in This Week article. “I paint not what I see, but what I feel.”
By the time Manansala painted this work, he had been riding high on his well-deserved success. He was the Philippines’ most famous painter. During his prolific 1970s, Manansala’s shows were instant blockbusters, his exhibits sold out in a snap. In his 1974 exhibition in Silay, Negros Occidental, all 40 art pieces were sold in only 10 minutes, breaking a record for a Philippine exhibition, reported by Woman’s Home Companion. In another show, in December 1977, art critic Leonidas Benesa wrote in the Philippine Daily Express that all 16 artworks were sold even before the exhibit could open. Benesa raved about this rare development in Manila art world, noting that before Manansala, only Tabuena had achieved this feat.
A young ‘Aling Hilda’ © Photo reproduced in the book Manansala by Rod. Paras-Perez
“For more than 20 years, Manansala has been receiving invitations from museums and galleries abroad for one-man shows”— Woman’s Home Companion. “But he has turned them all down. That is because, although a prolific artist who religiously paints every day, he cannot gather enough pieces for one-man shows. His works are bought before they are even started.”
However, there was a handful of paintings that Mang Enteng kept for himself, tucked in the bedroom of his Binangonan, Rizal, home. From the Market was among those works. Its current owner recalled that his mother acquired the work from Manansala himself one sunny day in 1975, when he accompanied her to Binangonan to visit Mang Enteng on the avid request of a very good friend.
The owner recalled that he witnessed how Manansala casually pulled this work from under the bed and offered it to his mother, whom Mang Enteng had always wanted to be one of his models for his paintings. “Mama and Mang Enteng had been acquaintances since after the war,” the owner said. During that time, Manansala worked as a staff artist in the Evening News, and the owner’s mother was a staffer in The Manila Times (then the country’s leading daily). She enjoyed the confidence of her boss, the esteemed Chino Roces. Both broadsheets were published by the Roces media empire.
“Mang Enteng had wanted my Mama to pose for him from that time, and he always ‘flirted’ with my beauteous mother,” the owner revealed. “Mang Enteng would always say to my mom, ‘Oh, you’re so beautiful! You should be my model.’ My mother always resisted but knew how to ‘flirt’ back.”
The owner recalled that after Manansala was done painting, he would put it under his bed; some paintings rolled up, others stretched flat. From the Market, the owner recalled, was laid out flat on a cardboard, wrapped and ready for framing. Manansala himself chose the painting as gift to the owner’s mother. He was remembered to have said: “This is one of my best paintings! This is my favorite work as this is my best ‘transparent cubist’ rendition of my palengke [market] scene, with myself as my favorite sabungero (cockfighter).”
“My mother refused to accept it as gift, because she was so conscious that she had to compensate people for their hard work,” said the owner. “She was always there as an avid supporter when the Filipino modernists were still financially struggling and striving for acceptance. She had always had a soft spot not just for these painters, but for everyone fairly and eagerly working their way to the top.”
From the Market is a beautiful painting of a harmonious blending of Manansala’s sense of self, his love and appreciation of his roots and culture, and an art lover/patron’s profound consciousness of promoting and cultivating the artist’s role in nation-building.
This intersection of art, culture, and personal relationships is compelling enough for Manansala to consider From the Market his favorite painting.
‘The Spectacular Mid-Year Auction’ is happening on June 7, 2025, 2 pm, at Eurovilla 1, Rufino corner Legazpi Streets, Legazpi Village, Makati City. Preview week is from May 31 to June 6, 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. Follow León Gallery on their social media pages for timely updates: Facebook – www.facebook.com/leongallerymakati and Instagram @leongallerymakati.
