A human being and industry

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: The National Museum of Art, Manila (Philippines).

The relationship between a machine and a man is a hot topic in the era of industrialization and the dominance of mechanisms. Who is a man in the modern world – a great master of machines or just a cog in the huge mechanism of the universe? Will soulless systems become more important and useful than living people? The viewer watching this picture of Vincent Manansala has such questions. The man’s unemotional face in the center of the horizontal canvas is similar to robots on the “flanks”. Gray “metallic” colour dominates the picture. In this work, the most visible influences of European Cubists, in particular, Fernand Leger, whose student he was for some time in Paris.