1949 / Oil on canvas / 110.5 x 147.3 cm / Artist: Romeo Tabuena / Private collection

This work represents the less-known side of Tabuena who is often associated with tonal paintings of nipa huts and peasants, fragile figures in a misty mountain setting. Painted in 1949, it represents his other style in complete contrast to the first; it is dark and heavy, while the other is ethereal. Although employing expressionist distortion, this work brings to the fore Tabuena’s lively figurative skill.

The central figure, a woman in the throes of childbirth, forms a long, tense, and dynamic curving line drawn out by her elongated limbs as she strains to release the babe in her womb, while the manghihilot or midwife, with exaggerated large and bony hands, massages her heaving stomach. Dramatic lighting is used to bring out the emotional intensity of the scene and to create a flickering baroque movement over the pictorial surface. The expressionist attenuation of the limbs, the heavy mysterious shadows of chiaroscuro, and the atmosphere of restless anxiety evoke the mythologic creatures of the underworld, the aswang or vampire who lie in wait for the newborn prey.

Childbirth is an unusual genre work that captures the folk quality in the situation and setting.