Mother and Child

Mediums: oil, canvas.
Location: National Museum of Art (Singapore).

The painting depicting a young mother with a baby in her arms is one of the author’s many works on the subject of motherhood. Here, we feel the artist’s special tenderness and reverence for Filipino women, their patience and endless love. In this work, Manansala’s original style, called “transparent cubism” by critics, was fully manifested. The artist did not divide the forms into separate fragments; by superimposing several planes on top of each other, he demonstrated various angles of the view, the figure and its surroundings. There is a second version of the picture, more detailed, with hard edges and ocher flowers, called “Madonna and Child”.