Nena Saguil (1924 - 1994)
Poésie de nuit (Poetry of the Night)
signed and dated Paris 1956 (lower right)
oil on canvas
36 1/4" x 28 3/4" (92 cm x 73 cm)



PROVENANCEAcquired at auction from the Societe Thierry de Maigret, SARL,Prints Sculptures & Modern Paintings Art Nouveau Art Deco XXthCentury Furniture, Drouot-Richelieu, Paris, France. Held on 14December 2016, Lot 109 .



The art of Nena Saguil,” wrote the French critic Waldemar George, “is an evasion and a compensation. It defies the principles of terrestrial gravity and violates the inexorable law of time. Such an art is an elevation. It transforms our passivity into activity by quenching our thirst for the absolute.” Commentators of Saguil’s works, reported the Filipino art historian Leonidas V. Benesa, “attest to the dreamlike quality and the tender sensibility underneath, (which for the Parisian observer), was explained as Oriental in origin.” Moreover, Benesa said, the French found her color sense as ‘perfect’ and her painting ‘full of poetry.’ By the 1960s, Benesa related, Saguil had transitioned “from the rectangular patternings executed under the spell of Mannesier with whom she had studied in Paris.” Alfred Mannesier (1911-1993) has been described as “one of the most important figures of his generation.” He was a leading artist in the post-war French abstract expressionist movement or School of Paris. His work would be included in groundbreaking shows at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s. Benesa also noted that in this period, Saguil’s palette was of “a color sense from red through green.” In 1954, Saguil had left Manila and the Philippine Art Gallery to find her destiny in Europe. She went first to Spain on a study grant; and in the next year, she had devised to receive a second scholarship, from the Walter Damrosch fund, this time in Paris. She would stay for the rest of her life. The work “Poetry of the Night” marks a major transformation in the arc of her career : Bold and geometric color that would foretell her more cosmic explorations. The painting suggests a red moon framed by a window, the light of a Parisian streetlight casts a golden glow. A jumble of shapes infer an empty bed that is, however, far from lonely. Benesa called her “an artist-astronaut of psychic space” and her impetus was “to discover new worlds of inner experience.” He believed that the art of Nena Saguil was universal and thus “would find its admirers anywhere, at any time.” Poesie de Nuit is thus a romantic and highly important relic from 1956 Paris. Totally preserved with the original frame, with inscription by Nena Saguiol herself on the stretcher and the original label from the framer in Paris. It is a time capsule of the spirit of Paris in the 1950s as captured by Nena Saguil.