Though Antonio Blanco was born in Manila, the Philippines in 1911, educated in Manila and settled permanently in Bali in 1952, both of his parents were Spanish who settled in Manila during the Spanish-American War. Blanco's ancestry gave him the belief that he was culturally and spiritually affiliated to the great Spanish art masters, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali.

After completing high school in Manila, Blanco studied at the National Academy of Art in New York and cultivated an interest, above all else, in figuration. As a result of his focus on the rendering of the human form during the formative period of his education in art, his best works as an established artist were, unsurprisingly, focused on the female body as nude.

Nude with Devil's Mask (Lot 186) is one of the most sensual reclining nude of the artist to come to market. The harem-like setting sees the with the lady reclined partially and holding on to a devil's mask with her right hand with a large curvaceous glass flask positioned strategically between her loins alongside a suggestive platter of twin fruits. A genie bottle is found on the lower right, spouting steam which translates artfully into the artist's signature. The intense, expressionistic deft paintwork belies a carefully conceived composition that draws attention to the blossoming sensuality of the odalisque.

Blanco sought a sense of what he termed disarray in this work and other reclining nudes - a disarray created by the asymmetrical balance of the vigorous swiftly applied brushstroke. With a poem in old Balinese script, the work speaks of naked sensuality that is perhaps only the surface underneath which bubbles away a larger sensual current.