The Bird Seller 1976

Vicente Manansala made "The Bird Seller" with oil paint, and look at the way he goes about things. He’s not trying to trick you into thinking this is real. It’s paint, and he's laying it down in these angular segments, like facets of a gem. And the colors! They are muted, not quite primary, and that gives it a kind of soulful, earthy feeling. The physical surface looks pretty smooth, maybe even a bit thinned out so that the paint glides. Check out how the artist depicts the seller's face. It’s almost like a mask, rendered with these strong, flat planes of color. It’s not about capturing a likeness, but more about conveying the essence of a person, caught in this daily routine. Manansala, like his peer Fernando Zobel, was clearly looking at cubism, but finding his own way. It's a conversation across time, about how to represent the world, not as it is, but as we feel it.