Lot description
Sabel signed and dated 2006 (lower right) acrylic on canvas 48" x 36" (122 cm x 91 cm) Throughout Bencab's six decades of prolific art practice, Sabel has seen constant iterations and reinventions: from the social realist-inspired and lyrical expressionist scavenger, who became the modern day Sisa when Bencab debuted the subject in his debut solo exhibition at the Gallery Indigo in 1966; to the geometric minimalist version and the abstract expressionist form; and finally, to the elegantly draped woman of the 21st century. Through this woman—who, for Bencab's part, perfectly echoed and embodied the words of the French art critic and poet Charles Baudelaire, "Once an artist has found his ideal subject, his work is halfway done"—the venerable artist found a constant companion to his brush and canvas, one that Bencab had successfully molded into different art currents all the while without losing the subject's essence. In Sabel, Bencab discovered that it was her cape-like sheets covering her body that invigorated the figure itself. The plastic sheets of the scavenger Sabel, which would eventually transform into the drapery mimicking the art of dance, serve as the foundation for whatever style Sabel was cast into. It was through Sabel that Bencab finally integrated his equal fascinations with the drapery, movement, and forms. When Bencab was bestowed the most honorable title of "National Artist for the Visual Arts" in 2006, the citation of his proclamation writes, "Bencab's exploration of form [has found] his way out of the late neo-realism and high abstraction of the sixties to be able to reconsider the potency of figurative expression…." Indeed, Sabel became the anchor to which Bencab wedded his excellent draftsmanship of the human figure and his constant search for a personal creative idiom. In turn, the "Sabel" of the 21st century, perhaps the most famous and coveted of all his "Sabels," gave Bencab his distinct and identifying mark, his most recognizable work and style. From the plastic sheets and ragamuffin clothes of the earlier Sabels, the quintessential muse was endowed with the classic elegance of the drapery, conferring unto her the gracefulness of dancing In this 2006 iteration of Sabel, which Bencab painted two months before he would be proclaimed National Artist, there still exist hints of the plastic sheets that once covered the woman as the artist saw it in the early 1960s in the vicinity of Bambang in Tondo, Manila. However, Bencab's gestural refinement, akin to an abstract expressionist's lyrical dexterity, enriches a layer of buoyant passion. Here, Sabel, the scavenger, is nowhere to be found. Instead, she is a woman of undying charm and beauty, further indicating Bencab's pride in his art, a sense of achievement and wellbeing. The Sabel in this work, gifted with the animating and dramatic expressiveness of the drapery, very much evokes Isadora Duncan, the American dancer and choreographer revered as "The Mother of Modern Dance" and whom Bencab explored in his art starting in the late 1990s. In the same vein as Duncan, the work at hand captures the swirls and billows of the pioneering dancer's dress, which is achieved through her spirited dance moves. Bencab emulates this through his brisk strokes. Bencab once said in an interview with Cid Reyes in April 1978 that he became "fascinated" with the image of Sabel as "she made a terrific image visually." "I thought she made a terrific subject matter for my paintings," Bencab remarked. "She used to gather these plastic sheets and wrap them around her body. They made the most beautiful abstract shapes." And so, Sabel embodied Bencab's never-ending delight in the harmonious wedding of the figure and the drapery. Although Sabel died in 1972, she remains Bencab's consummate exploration of his fascination for the centuries old art of the drapery and how it endows immortality to one's ephemerality through a sweeping vision of motion and energy. And since the plastic sheets that once covered Sabel's body have been transformed into a life-inducing and life animating element that is the drapery, Sabel would live on forever as Bencab's perennial muse