Fiesta
signed and dated 1991 (lower right)
oil on canvas
30" x 40" (76 cm x 102 cm)


PROVENANCE: Private collection, Manila



In the 1990s, writer Gilda Cordero-Fernando had asked the painter Antonio Mahilum to do the illustrations for a children’s book adaptation of the Cinderella-esque folktale Mariang Alimango. Although the finished products of the Mariang Alimango series would not come to fruition, they would nonetheless be among the works Mahilum would be most remembered for. The works of Antonio Mahilum, after all, possess a strikingly cinematic sense to them. In his depictions of rural living, he festively captures a total sense of folk collectivity often through wide perspectives and high viewpoints, with the viewer’s eye akin to a camera panning across the bustling crowds laid out across the canvas. Having worked in billboard and movie advertising and producing kartelon in the late 1960s, Mahilum seemed to have acquired a knack for storytelling that brought a refreshing sense of directness to his works. On canvas, the result is a festive mise en scène, alluring with its classic folk rural charm framed in a cinematic still life. (Pie Tiausas)