Carnival Forms II
signed (lower right and verso)dated 1993
acrylic painting/collage
72" x 48" (183 cm x 122 cm)
Accompanied by a certificate issued by Ms. Luisa Luz-Lansiganconfirming the authenticity of this lot



Arturo Luz's propensity for the festive can be traced back to the 1950s. It started in 1952 when Luz witnessed a somewhat playful scene: four men riding a single bicycle. "The sight struck me as very Filipino," Luz shares. Luz translated this scene into a 1952 work titled Bagong Taon, which depicts silhouetted figures of cyclists. "In the painting, I added the tooting horn…[It] had a sense of celebration, performance, joy of life. This was the granddaddy of them all," says the artist. According to Cid Reyes, in his 1999 book on the artist, Bagong Taon, with its depiction of the tooting horn, suggested another celebratory series: the musicians, notably in Musikero. Luz remarks: "In Manila, musicians with neither talent nor jobs then made a living by serenading from door to door. They go about in pairs, forming the most unlikely duos, with their clarinet and drum, cymbals and horn." In 1954, Luz and another PAG fellow Cesar Legaspi received a grant from the Spanish embassy. With the help of another PAG stalwart, Fernando Zóbel, the two obtained scholarships from the Instituto de Cultura Hispánica. At the end of their studies in 1955, Luz solely explored Europe. Luz found Europe as an exuberant continent, enkindling a nostalgia for his native Philippines. During these travels, he created numerous drawings of the places he visited. Luz's acrobats would manifest themselves in these drawings for the first time. These works hark back to the bizarre scene Luz witnessed in 1952, in which the four men resemble acrobats skillfully balancing on tall unicycles. But it was in sunny Madrid, with the spirit of its annual 'Carnival' still lingering, where the carnival theme would emerge from Luz's creative fountain. Reyes says of this period: "The series, which he called Carnival Wall, contained the single common image of the Ferris wheel rendered as a circular shape with spokes emanating from the center. In the latter half of the 1950s, covering Luz's return to the Philippines, he devoted himself to the subjects of carnivals and musicians. Reyes writes: "The carnival theme shifted from the simplest renditions of Ferris wheels to the most elaborate and filigreed versions." Thanks to these festive themes—and his modernist virtuoso—Luz emerged as a critically lauded, revered artist. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Luz temporarily cast aside his penchant for the carnival and explored other themes in various media: sculpture, collage, and burlap. Like the gradual circular motion of the Ferris wheel, Luz would finally come full circle four decades later. In the 1990s, he embarked on his most iconic, grandest, and sustained series of works—Celebration, Carnival Forms, and Forms of Amusement. Particularly in the Carnival Forms series, to which the work at hand belongs, Luz evokes the exciting and nostalgic atmosphere of a carnival executed through his rigorous discipline, solid mathematical instincts, and a harmonious relationship between linear forms and colors, albeit applied sparsely. Reyes writes that Luz further reduced the subject into its most elementary forms in these works. The artist uses circles of varying sizes to evoke the figures of towering yet calming Ferris wheels. Oblongs and ovals represent the rousing drops, rises, turns, and sudden speeds of the winding roller coasters. The shapes overlap, suggesting the carnival's vibrancy, especially when seen from a certain distance. Luz employs crumpled paper for the bases and loops of the roller coasters and the main axles of the Ferris wheels. "I had to destroy the smoothness of paper," Luz says. The easiest way to destroy the surface of the paper is to crumple it, to rid it of its shiny, metallic quality. Having done that, the paper is straightened flat and glued on plywood. When paint is applied on that crumpled surface, you get these intricate webs of lines. It's an interesting effect you won't get another way." Indeed, in its origins and technical brilliance, Luz's Carnival Forms is a celebration of all sorts. It is a testament to his versatility in reconfiguring on a much grander scale the various subjects that had previously lingered in his spirited imagination, thus capably surpassing his own creative genius. (A.M.)