Anita Magsaysay - Ho

Important Private Asian Collection

Purita Kalaw-Ledesma, Alice Guerrero Guillermo, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Isang Pag-Alaala, A Retrospective, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988, P. 96

The work is in good condition overall, as is the canvas, which is clear and taut. There is light wear and handling around the edges of the painting, along with very faint networks of craquelures on the darker paints of the top margin, and two minute spots of paint losses on the rightmost figure. Examination under ultraviolet light shows no sign of restoration. Paint layers and impastos are healthy, and any inconsistency is due to the artist's working method. Framed.
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Throughout most of the Southeast Asian modern art canon of the twentieth century, male artists largely governed the creative sphere. Within this light, the artistic achievements of Filipino artist Anita Magsaysay-Ho shine even brighter. She was known as the “Female Amorsolo”, if only because both Filipino artists chose to paint variations of womanhood in their oeuvre. However, Magsaysay-Ho’s representation was not dictated by sensuality, but rather was a celebration of national pride as seen through the feminine spirit. It was these women’s stories that the artist strived to depict in the framework of her paintings.

“In my work I always celebrate the women of the Philippines. I regard them with deep admiration and they to continue to inspire me—their movements and gestures, their expressions of happiness and frustration; their diligence and shortcomings; their joy of living. I know very well the strength, hard work and quiet dignity [they possess], for I am one of them”, the artist said¹.

The present work entitled Paghuhuli Ng Mga Manok (Catching Chickens) is a classic piece from the artist’s oeuvre. Her portrayals of rural women provided a platform for the audience to empathise with those individuals, whose lives were for a moment part of the public domain. It was this reciprocal relationship that has garnered her oeuvre much acclaim and the artist recognized as one of the Thirteen Moderns who had a transformative impact on Filipino modern art. Within this grouping of artists, Magsaysay-Ho was the only female.

She began her art education at nine years old under the tutorage of Ireneo Miranda who was a respected cartoonist. Magsaysay-Ho did her formal training at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, and later at the School of Design in Manila where her professors included fellow artists Fernando Amorsolo and Victorio Edades. In the thirties the artist had the opportunity to study in America, specifically at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan and then at the Art Students' League in New York City.

It was an encounter with works by Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, that Magsaysay-Ho discovered her soon to be established themes and motifs. The Flemish artist's works were on view at the Cranbrook Art Museum, and the depictions of peasant women reminded Magsaysay-Ho of similar women in the Philippines. “I was looking for a subject that I could feel for, something that I could really paint”, she said. "Well, I am a woman and I know how a woman feels, but what really inspired me to do those women [was] Bruegel. There was a Bruegel painting of some women in the fields at the Cranbrook Art Museum”².

Paghuhuli Ng Mga Manok (Catching Chickens) makes references to the pastoral narratives found in Peter Bruegel’s works, such as The Hay Harvest (Ref. 1). The sisterly camaraderie of the three women walking home and their shared intimacy is a foreshadowing of the women who would soon inhabit Magsaysay-Ho’s oeuvre. While her subject matter may be defined as traditional, it was in the artist’s painterly style where Magsaysay-Ho leaned towards the avant-garde. Although early works emulated the style of Fernando Amorsolo, as seen in Sa Bukid (In the Farm) (Ref. 2) painted in 1944, her own style soon evolved and found a voice within Cubist and Neo-Realist principles. At the Art Students' League Magsaysay-Ho received guidance from the American artist Kenneth Hayes Miller who formerly taught the painter Edward Hopper, himself renowned for his Realist depictions of post-war America.

If the fifties was a period where the women were painted with “brisk, decisive lines… to simplify forms into basic geometric shapes [such as] triangles for bandannas and rectangles for skirts, creating… a counterpoint of sharp, angular forms”³, than the next decade saw a shift in styles through the softening of the figures, as well as light and shadows gaining precedence in the compositions. Mga Naglalako Ng Manok (Chicken Vendors) (Ref. 3) shows this transition. The work was painted in 1957, a mere five years before Paghuhuli Ng Mga Manok (Catching Chickens). What was seen in the fifties as an experimental use of Cubist distortion, now established itself within her oeuvre as a complimentary pairing of such aesthetics with the artist’s personal style.

True to the artist’s overall collection of works, Paghuhuli Ng Mga Manok (Catching Chickens) is very much an action painting. Magsaysay-Ho’s women were never quiet individuals who decorated the landscapes. Rather it was their interactions that fuelled the artworks, and thus gave life to the narratives. The present work is no exception, for the women are sharing an experience, their actions telling a story of “chickens flying about, and chasing them with eager hands and [noises from the] chickens cackling, feathers rustling, [and] excited cries”⁴.

There is ultimately a sense of joy in the painting, of the women busy with the farmhouse chores, and their happiness of being together. In this domestic piece, Magsaysay-Ho has captured the essence of the Filipino woman in her strength and femininity, but above all, her role as a fundamental part of the country’s progress.

 ¹. Sonia Ner, In Celebration, in praise of artist Anita Magsaysay-Ho; 97, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Sunday, May 6, 2012.

 ². Cid Reyes, Talking shop with Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Sunday, May 13, 2012.

³. Purita Kalaw-Ledesma/ Alice Guerrero Guillermo, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, Isang Pag-Alaala, A Retrospective, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1988, p. 18.

⁴. Refer to 3, p.19.