Girl Sitting
signed and dated 1994 (lower right)
acrylic on canvas
30” x 24” (76 cm x 61 cm)

Ben Cabrera acknowledges the female German artist Kathe Kollwitz as having the greatest influence on his works, especially those dealing with the lower classes like beggars, scavengers, and laborers, and the mother and child theme. Her empathic themes portraying the less fortunate aside, Kollwitz has also done voluptuous depiction of women.

BenCab’s women are rendered not with the hyper-masculine bravado that defines Filipino machismo, but with an almost reverential disposition toward the power of the female form. The body of the woman is not subdued by the solid yellow color of the dress. The allure emanates from the fantasy of possibilities evoked by the imagery, replicated, multiplied in the realm of the subconscious, but potent only for its perpetual non-actualization.

The viewer becomes fixated at the curves that undulate shaping them into the women of the viewer’s fantasies.