BY JOANNE RAE RAMIREZ
“Love Rite,” a mural Filipino by National Artist Jose Joya, fetched ₱59.56 million in the annual fund-raising auction of the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) and Leon Gallery, gallery founder Jaime Ponce de Leon revealed to PeopleAsia tonight. The winning bid was ₱35 million more than the starting bid price of ₱24 million.
The painting belonged to the collection of builder and “Woman of Steel” Alice G. Eduardo of Sta. Elena Construction and Development Corp. “When you give, you give from the heart, or manghihinayang ka lang (you may regret it),” Eduardo told the author.
“This was truly from the heart,” Eduardo added, when asked why she was willing to part with her Joya, instead of giving a cash donation. This was not lost on Leon Gallery founder Jaime Ponce de Leon, who said the sale of Eduardo’s Joya is the second highest ever for a Joya.
Another artwork in the auction, “Fruit Market” by Anita Magsaysay-Ho has broken world records for a Magsaysay-Ho, with a winning bid for ₱86.4 million.
Part of the proceeds from the auction will, in keeping with ACC’s mission, go to grants to the most talented of Filipino artists in fields as diverse as the seven arts, museum studies, critic and curatorial development, as well as conservation and collection management.
Ponce de Leon is grateful to Eduardo “for her great generosity in allowing her prized mural-sized Jose Joya that graced the living room of her Forbes Park home to not only be the cover piece of this year’s auction, but to benefit the cause of the Asian Cultural Council. As a trustee of the ACC, she felt it only right to give back to the very institution that molded its first grantee to become a future Philippine National Artist.”
Aside from Joya’s “Love Rite” and Magsaysay-Ho’s “Fruit Market,” other notable works in the auction included Vicente Manansala’s “Madonna,” a Parisian work from Nena Saguil, H.R. Ocampo’s “Evensong,” and Ang Kiukok’s “Fish” (in two iterations).
The importance of the ACC grants cannot be overstated, said Ponce de Leon, “Because the further studies and exposure of our artists to the international arena allow them to be world class. Take Joya and Chabet for example, and numerous others who have brought so much honor for us as well as putting us in the cultural map,” he said.
