Concert in the Alley (Concert dans L'lmpasse)
signed and dated 1992 (lower right)
ink wash on paper mounted on board
62 1/4” x 43” (158 cm x 109 cm)

Provenance:
Collection of the Artist’s immediate family
Christie's, Southeast Asian Modern and Contemporary Art Auction, Hong Kong, 30 May 2011, Lot 1742

Exhibited:
Cultural Center of the Philippines, Onib Olmedo: Dimensions of Depth, Bulwagang Juan Luna (Main Gallery), Pasay City, Philippines,27 September – 8 November 2007 In My Life: Soul Portraits by Onib Olmedo, Ayala Museum, Makati City, Philippines, November 2010 – January 2011

Literature:
Guerrero-Guillermo, Alice, Onib Olmedo: Dimensions of Depth, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Pasay City, 2007, p. 84 (illustrated)

Awarded:
Honorable Mention at the Cagnes-sur-Mer international art competition in 1992

This piece is accompanied by a certificate issued by Gisella Olmedo - Araneta confirming the authenticity of this lot

The appeal of the instrumentalist and the opportunity of allegory have attracted the visual artist for centuries, and the angstfilled Onib Olmedo is no exception.

Salve R. Limbo wrote in 1977: “Onib prefers the reflective effects of black and white, the complimentary effects of light and shadow. His pen and ink sketches expressively underline the character and action of the subject in strong but economic lines.In the same vein, most of his people seem to inhabit a world of shadows, but while they do so, they are not necessarily shadow.In fact, they even retain a vestige of innocence. His world becomes a full complex of well-reasoned technical contrivance in an apparently illogical social and mystical symbolism.”

Onib Olmedo’s black and white paintings are done in a reverse process, in which the artist first paints a solid coat of India ink on the glossy cartolina, then proceeds to pick up areas with a cotton swab.

While Olmedo himself says that he pursues the theme of portraying the human condition rather than the human situation, thereby implying that he would rather do away with particularities of social class and even, perhaps of nationality, still much of his best work is drawn upon his immediate social environment.

A violinist in the window, grills torn out, a brick wall, motorcycles in a row down below. The violin, if not the violinist has been a recurring theme of Olmedo. Likewise, the brick wall backdrop has been a recurring leitmotif, if you will, what with Olmedo’s “Manang Quintet” from 1994 which also features musicians.

The features of the wall and the motorcycles below are reduced to being major details of the composition, all studies of contrasts between black and white.

In this painting, Onib Olmedo’s usual atmospheric effects are neutralized to concentrate on the violinist in the window. The viewer is bound to look at the violinist’s face. Onib Olmedo has taken Expressionist distortion and applied it with feverish intensity to the human face as if he were wreaking vengeance on the whole history of portrait commissions.

Onib’s faces form a gallery of horrors unequaled by any domestic artist to date. Grotesquely puffy faces with beady eyes andpursed mouths are intended to reveal inner foments and obsessions, aimed only at glorifying the faces of the rich and powerful for better public relations. The precise origins of music and paintings may be lost, but the compelling testament remains, that music has always charmed the ear and moved the spirit — and paradoxically, as this expressionist work by Onib Olmedo shows, delight the eye.