1968 / Acrylic on wood / 60 x 54 centimetres / Artist: Anita Magsaysay-Ho / Robert C. F. Ho Collection

Women in genre activities are the subjects of Magsaysay-Ho’s paintings. Done in the late 1960s, Chickens is part of a series portraying women harvesting fruit, gathering sheaves of grain, and selling fish in the market. Magsaysay-Ho emphasized movement and bustling interaction by means of bold and vigorous brushstrokes, and strong tonal contrasts of light and darkness. There is a marked tendency to simplify forms into basic geometric shapes: triangles for bandannas, rectangles for skirts. While the composition is circular and closed, there is a variety of interaction among the figures as well as an impression of fluttering movements in the chickens flying about, women chasing them with eager hands, and chickens cackling, their feathers rustling.

The spatial intervals are filled with white bird shapes flying while the women’s hands with outspread fingers flap and wave, their bodies bending and turning in counterpoint. Adding to the sense of excitement is the textural surface treatment as the hard bristles of the brush make sharp hatching and cross-hatching on the hardboard. The women subjects themselves are generalized with no particularizing features, their figures stylized as they are in most of Magsaysay-Ho’s other works.