ONIB OLMEDO’S UNIQUE ‘MOTHER AND CHILD’
Onib Olmedo’s “Mother and Child,” part of the artist’s Vienna Collection, is one of the major features of the León Gallery’s midyear auction.
“Vienna Collection” consists of 14 paintings exhibited at the Philippine Embassy in Vienna, Austria, in 1996. It was Olmedo’s last exhibition before he died the same year.
A pastel-on-colored felt paper, “Mother and Child,” is “a stark departure from the cloyingly sweet mother-and-child artwork stereotypes,” says the artist’s widow, Bettina Olmedo.
Onib’s portrait depicts his subject with the late artist’s unique brand of figurative expressionism.
It shows a mother with muscular arms, exaggeratedly long fingers that look like claws, and humongous breasts. She is not shown cuddling her infant or gazing at him with a tender look of affection as she is poised to breastfeed him.
Feeling of discomfiture
Providing interesting props in the painting are the accoutrements of a bourgeois lifestyle suggested by the white brass bed, the Tiffany lamp and the comforter with a colorful, patchwork-quilt design.
“Overall, the painting produces a feeling of discomfiture on the viewer because it is not the usual saccharine depiction of the joys of motherhood, but rather, a brutally honest portrayal of the other side of motherhood—the restrictive and sacrificial impact of parenting on women who are overwhelmed by its awesome responsibilities,” says Bettina.
Onib Olmedo, born in 1937, garnered all the major awards, including the Mobil Art Awards of 1980, in which he was named winner along with Ang Kiukok, José Joya, Romulo Olazo and Danilo Dalena.
He also won an award in the International Competition of Painters in 1992, in Cagnes-Sur-Mer, France.