LOT 49
JUSTIN NUYDA
B. Philipphines, 1944
Mindscape Series, 1974
Signed and dated ‘J.NUYDA, 74’ on lower right
Oil on canvas
75.9 x 75.9 cm
Private Collection, United Kingdom
RM 40,000 – RM 90,000
Filipino visual artist Justin “Tiny” Nuyda was born in 1944. He is regarded as a pillar of the Filipino modern art and is a co-founder of the legendary Saturday Group (through which he enjoyed many years of friendship and camaraderie with his contemporaries and literary greats). The enigmatic Nuyda has been painting for nearly five decades and the discipline he subscribes to has a cerebral quality to it. While it’s hard to pinpoint the exact kind of art he creates, it’s breathtaking all the same. The process of creating the artist’s magical works first starts with priming the canvas with as much as seven coatings, followed by painting it with waif-like strokes that are both robust and delicate, invoking a solid slate and the fluidity of butterfly wings floating over the horizon. He learned a lot of this from the late National Artist Cesar Legaspi who had a special fondness for him. He then scrapes the paint to create a gradient feel. Nuyda’s colours are illusions of movement, going backward and forward. However, he only uses white for blending the vivid colours on his canvas. Nuyda’s body of work demonstrates his considerable skill and imagination in reconciling the geometric and organic.