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BLACK BOUQUET:
Juvenal Sansó Prints 1955-1968
Exhibition Notes (Excerpt)
by Ditas R. Samson
Ayala Museum’s offering for Zero-in 5: Convergence is a selection of etchings and lithographs executed by Juvenal Sansó in an intense creative period during his early years in Paris. Print making combines technology with creative skill, a convergence of techniques and aesthetics. Black Bouquet: Juvenal Sansó Prints 1955-1968 is literally a graphic interpretation of this year’s Zero-In theme of arts and sciences.
The oeuvre of Juvenal Sansó from the mid-1950s to 1968 consists of an abundant crop of prints with images that have become iconic in modern Philippine printmaking. In this exhibition, we focus on etchings and some lithographs from Sansó’s Paris years, which started after he moved to the French capital in 1953 and ended during the May 1968 student revolutions.
The images that began his artistic ascent, Sorcerer and Incubus, paintings that took the first prize in two different competitions of the newly organized Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) in 1951 were graphic renditions of the young man’s nightmares of the Japanese Occupation. At the start of Sansó’s early years in Paris, his works underwent a Black Period and were peopled grotesqueries of the underbelly of society, street detritus, and urban decay. Etching revitalized Sansó’s pictorial realities and spawned the growth of new images - gnarled trees, verdant black blossoms, desolate landscapes with rough stones, lofty peaks and bamboo fish traps.
Modern printmaking was still waiting to be pioneered and proselytized in the Philippines as an art movement. This would happen only in 1962 with Manuel Rodriguez, Sr., but Sansó was at his creative and innovative peak in the late 1950s. His black bouquet, sardonic genre landscapes, and stark landscapes are among the early images in Philippine modern prints. While he had no direct influence on the development of printmaking, he was the first serious practitioner of graphic art from the Philippines. He had the first one-man exhibition of etching at the Philippine Art Gallery in 1957. His accomplishments in the graphic medium were further recognized when he was commissioned to do an edition of Lueurs (Moonglow), which was chosen in 1962 as Print of the Year by the Philadelphia Print Club. In 1964, the Cleveland Print Club declared Sansó as Artist of the Year.
This exhibition revisits these works, the various states and editions of well-known images such as Baklad, Moonglow, and various versions of vegetation. We can view the prints in sequence or simultaneously. While it is obvious that a number of prints came from the same plate, the variations, alterations, and improvisation of each state or edition distinguishes each and invigorates the whole series.
Sansó’s métier has always been drawing; a strong linear structure supports his drawings, graphic work, and paintings. While Sansó did not follow the expectations of his father, his art shaped by his father’s works. The strong linearity in Sansó’s images has its beginning in his familiarity in the wrought iron trade. His involvement in printmaking stems from the craftsmanship he may have seen on a daily basis in his father’s workshops, how to work with hard and cold metal to yield images, design, and expressiveness.
The work of his father lives in the works of Juvenal Sansó, now ingrained images and icons in Philippine graphic expressions.
Note: The Sansó prints in this exhibit belong to a private collection and not available for sale. |
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