1953 / Oil on canvas / 94 x 110 cm / Artist: Hernando R. Ocampo aka H.R. Ocampo / Ateneo Art Gallery collection

Ocampo’s depiction of the Philippine mythical bird, the sarimanok, is a truly festive sight to behold. Lush, tropical orange and yellow hues light up the canvas, carefully balanced by cool shades of green. The sumptuous colors are matched by a profusion of geometric shapes that create zigzags and sunbursts all over the bird’s body. The three sunburst shapes are general centers of interest, causing the viewer’s eye to move in a circle from one point of the painting to another.

The subject itself has been abstracted to such a degree that it can barely be made out by the viewer. Traditional perspective and anatomical detail are disregarded in the painting. Ocampo employed the bird shape simply as a take-off point for his study of color relationships and shape interactions. He placed no emphasis on the realistic appearance of the bird, and chose instead to fragment the sarimanok into a complex puzzle of variously shaped, rainbow-hued pieces.

As the artist himself wrote the year he painted the Sarimanok: “I am more interested in how shapes, hues, values, textures and lines interact with one another in space, than in capturing a photographic semblance of nature.” In the process of creating a new reality on canvas, Ocampo developed a style that may be considered uniquely Filipino.