Lot description
Born in the Philippines in 1916, Alfonso Ossorio lived in England and the United States, where he completed a degree in fine arts at Harvard University on the thesis "Spiritual Influences on the Visual Representation of Christ." Years after graduating, Ossorio lived in New York, he where met and befriended influential artists and collectors, among them Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, who were also visual artists. He was also close friends with the French artist Jean Dubuffet, a pioneer of art brut. We Are Many belongs to Ossorio's celebrated 'Victorias' series, one of several paintings he completed during a visit to his family's Victorias, Negros Occidental sugar mill where he worked on a mural for the plantation's chapel in the early 1950s. This striking artwork can be viewed in several layers, each one a clue to unravelling its many secrets. First, there are the large naif figures rendered in the wax-resist technique that appear outwardly to be the innocent drawings of children. Then, as the viewer draws closer, one is struck by the sight of highly intricate drawings of crawling infants, naked bodies, and contorted body parts all coming together in a phantasmagoric flood of moral and sexual questioning. A metaphor for the artist working through the torment of his inner demons, this work is, in the opinion of Salcedo Auctions advisor Ramon E.S. Lerma, Ossorio at his finest.
