Tres Marias
signed and dated 1985 (upper right)
oil on canvas
26" x 31" (67 cm x 79 cm)

Accompanied by a certificate issued by Mr. Christian M. Aguilar confirming the authenticity of this lot




Federico Aguilar Alcuaz is among the country’s most enduring modernists. Bold and cosmopolitan with a flair for Spanish sensibilities, his works are among the most coveted, with one of his most popular series Tres Marias finding itself in the annals of Philippine art history.“The Tres Marias series was painted between 1978 and 1979,” says Alcuaz’s older brother Mariano “Ovit” Aguilar Jr. in Rod Paras-Perez’s Parallel Texts. “The subjects were waitresses at Cafe Coquilla, Rotisserie, and the Chinese restaurant in the Manila Hilton, where he is staying. The paintings were done during the free hours or breaks of these waitresses.”In this 1985 Tres Marias, the artist evokes the somber color palette of Spanish painters Diego Velázquez and Francisco Goya but with his characteristic playfulness seeping through.Three women in what looks like traditional Spanish dresses are sitting in a loose circle, caught in the middle of a chat. His brush strokes, swift and short, give a sense of immediacy to the portraiture, as though it was a picture taken mise-en- scène, a feeling exemplified when one takes into consideration the familiar way the women are huddled together, the blurred window at their back implying their indoor setting, and the angle Alcuaz chose to paint this scene with which suggests the viewer is an unwitting guest walking into the room the women are in.“The paintings could invoke by themselves [various] anecdotes,” Alcuaz writes about a different Tres Marias painting in a December 22, 1981 journal. While it is a comment about a specific work, this sentiment could be extended to the rest of Alcuaz’s Tres Marias series. In his depiction of women amid their daily activities, he provides a tableau of the rich hidden world of women that is often not depicted elsewhere. Their camaraderie takes center stage, raising the intimate relationships one’s mother, sister, wife, and daughter engage in outside the oft-patriarchal social setting.In Alcuaz’s many iterations of the Marias, he has told a myriad of stories that do not limit themselves to one interpretation. Instead, they are evergrowing and ever-evolving, allowing the viewer to connect to his work in a deeply personal way. (Hannah Valiente)