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Lot Essay
The Spanish-Filipino artist Antonio Blanco is celebrated for the expressive sensuality of his oeuvre. This season, Christie's is honoured to be entrusted with the sale of Little Eva (Lot 34) from the late artist's family collection. Funds from the sale of the painting will be channeled to the Blanco Foundation's ongoing work in improving the facilities of the Antonio Blanco Renaissance Museum in Ubud. The Antonio Blanco Renaissance Museum was built by Antonio Blanco himself shortly before his passing away in 1999. Although Blanco never lived to see the inauguration of his museum, a flamboyant building in classic Spanish style that that blends Balinese architectural elements, he left behind a body of work that has become some of the most iconic representations of the female figure.
Born in Manila, Philippines to Spanish parents originally from Catalonia, Spain, Blanco was educated at the Fine Arts Academy in New York under Sidney Dickinson. In art school, Blanco was drawn to the depiction of the female body and pursued that with enthusiasm and great facility. 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.
Blanco traveled extensively before coming to Bali in 1952 and decided to live in Bali. Having been gifted a piece of land on higher grounds, in Campuhan, Ubud where the present Antonio Blanco Renaissance Museum stands, Blanco set up his studio and home with his Balinese wife and muse, Ni Ronji.
LITTLE EVA: A BALINESE VENUS
The sitter in this portrait is Tjempaka, one of four children of Blanco and Ni Ronji. Tjempaka is depicted as a figure of innocence and desire, figuring between fantasy and reality. Tjempaka sits in the conventional pose of the odalisque of nineteenth century Orientalist pictures. She languidly offers a green apple from her right hand, a mystical and forbidden fruit in many religious traditions. In Antonio Blanco's eyes, Tjempaka is the Balinese incarnate of Venus, the goddess of love.
Possessing the apple, or symbolically, the power to defy God, gain knowledge, exercise her sexuality, and influence men in general, Tjempaka is in fact not a figure eliciting temptation, but wielding it as a tool of control. This is apparent in her straight gaze out of the frame at the viewer with dignity and haughtiness, in keeping with her persona as the temptress and goddess of love.
Blanco termed works of his such as Little Eva incorporating these pictorial elements - a girl, apples, drum and a kendi (a traditional water vessel) - as his 'erotic fantasies'. It was only in Bali that Blanco found the permissiveness and inspiration to work. From his hilltop home in Campuhan, surrounded by lust tropical gardens and rice fields, Blanco sought to recreate a paradise, a romantic other reality that he would portray in his works.
Featuring young women in his works, Blanco was able to explore the different facets of beauty and feminism. Little Eva is a key work that defines the artistic trajectory that Blanco undertook. In order to create a sensuous and erotic tone, he would focus on close-ups of the models to express female sexuality. His sitters, however, were not always conventional depiction of desire. Through his paintings, Blanco puts forth a conviction that women should embrace and not suppress their sexuality because real beauty is confidence.
Born in Manila, Philippines to Spanish parents originally from Catalonia, Spain, Blanco was educated at the Fine Arts Academy in New York under Sidney Dickinson. In art school, Blanco was drawn to the depiction of the female body and pursued that with enthusiasm and great facility. 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.
Blanco traveled extensively before coming to Bali in 1952 and decided to live in Bali. Having been gifted a piece of land on higher grounds, in Campuhan, Ubud where the present Antonio Blanco Renaissance Museum stands, Blanco set up his studio and home with his Balinese wife and muse, Ni Ronji.
LITTLE EVA: A BALINESE VENUS
The sitter in this portrait is Tjempaka, one of four children of Blanco and Ni Ronji. Tjempaka is depicted as a figure of innocence and desire, figuring between fantasy and reality. Tjempaka sits in the conventional pose of the odalisque of nineteenth century Orientalist pictures. She languidly offers a green apple from her right hand, a mystical and forbidden fruit in many religious traditions. In Antonio Blanco's eyes, Tjempaka is the Balinese incarnate of Venus, the goddess of love.
Possessing the apple, or symbolically, the power to defy God, gain knowledge, exercise her sexuality, and influence men in general, Tjempaka is in fact not a figure eliciting temptation, but wielding it as a tool of control. This is apparent in her straight gaze out of the frame at the viewer with dignity and haughtiness, in keeping with her persona as the temptress and goddess of love.
Blanco termed works of his such as Little Eva incorporating these pictorial elements - a girl, apples, drum and a kendi (a traditional water vessel) - as his 'erotic fantasies'. It was only in Bali that Blanco found the permissiveness and inspiration to work. From his hilltop home in Campuhan, surrounded by lust tropical gardens and rice fields, Blanco sought to recreate a paradise, a romantic other reality that he would portray in his works.
Featuring young women in his works, Blanco was able to explore the different facets of beauty and feminism. Little Eva is a key work that defines the artistic trajectory that Blanco undertook. In order to create a sensuous and erotic tone, he would focus on close-ups of the models to express female sexuality. His sitters, however, were not always conventional depiction of desire. Through his paintings, Blanco puts forth a conviction that women should embrace and not suppress their sexuality because real beauty is confidence.