Artist Ronald Ventura has won many awards, but his most notable recognition might be breaking through the competitive, traditionally snobbish international art scene. In 2011, his painting Grayhound sold for US$1 million at the Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Paintings auction in Hong Kong. This is the most that any Southeast Asian work has gone for from a modern, living artist who continues to live and work in the Philippines. Ventura dishes out a whiff of Manila culture, pleasant or not, in his art, with his signature strokes: a mix of realism with graffiti, cartoons and religious iconography. He projects the human condition from the Third World as though it is high-definition animation, and the First World pays to view it on demand. He has participated in the 2009 Prague Biennale and the 2010 Nanjing Biennale.

The Malabon-raised artist cites Human Study, which won the Ateneo Art Awards in 2005, as his breakthrough piece. He earned a prestigious studio residency grant in Australia through the award. The work eventually sold for US$700,000 in Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2018, but his 2017 piece, Party Animal, has trumped that, selling for US$2 million at Christie’s in 2021.

In 2023, Ventura mounted three shows exploring the philosophy of mobility. He exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Ayala Museum and Salcedo Auctions, displaying a painting that used carbon fibre and a sculpture that served as a commentary on NFTs.