"FIRM FOUNDATION": CARLO MAGNO’S MILESTONE SHOW
This should be a milestone as milestones go.
25 years of painting professionally. And, a forthcoming 20th one-man show to boot. Carlo Magno has indeed paid his dues, done his time and today reaps the whirlwind of his efforts. A bountiful harvest it is proving to be.
Although the actual painting for a living started a good twenty five years ago, Magno’s interest in art started way before that. It started when he was about a boy of twelve when he remembers making his first landscape drawings. The interest in art meant a continued search. At first he tried his hand as a student in Architecture before shifting to Music but it was only when he settled on Fine Arts and enrolled at the Philippine Women’s University in 1978 that he truly found his calling. This is the same university that has produced many distinguished Filipino artists including Raul Lebajo, Ibarra de La Rosa, Prudencio Lamarozza, Pandy Aviado and Raul Isidro among others.
Magno found himself so engrossed in the world of art that he started organizing several group shows and even headed his own art group called LIKARLA, a group composed of realist painters. Several awards came next including the Grand Prize at the Hispanidad Art Center as well as the First Prize in a YMCA sponsored art competition for his painting titled "Bayanihan".
Magno recalls being inspired by Vermeer’s art. He found himself painting interiors of old houses and windows. Other influences were Richard Estes and Winslow Homer, who inspired him to do landscapes. From the early eighties Magno’s work never failed to elicit praises for its distinct creative imagery and thoughtful clarity. Through the years his subjects have been diverse including ancestral homes, churchyards, interiors, vistas, and cathedral altars and bell towers. The works were usually highlighted byday to day objects that when transformed by the artist’s highly creative brush became symbols of nostalgia and romanticism such as a batibot chair, a fountain in a churchyard, a cart or even a pail.
The works undeniably left warm emotions to his countless viewers and collectors and looking back, one can only agree with an art critic who in the eighties wrote that this is because Magno’s works successfully capture "a time, a day, a season, an emotion or an era." They are a "mosaic of recollection and retrospectives." Other critics and peers acknowledging his technique referred to him as a "master of light".
On his fifteenth one man show, in the year 2003 however, Magno embarked on a completely new direction. He decided to explore the world of abstract art. That show was aptly titled "Transformation" and in that show he exhibited 30 works characterized by his rich exuberant colors highlighted by the variety of textures and techniques he had accumulated through the years. Magno himself saw the leap from figurative or representational art into the world of abstraction as a logical, albeit highly exciting development. "I find it very exciting because abstract art is so free flowing", he notes.
What he did, however, was bring with him into the world of abstraction, elements he picked up while doing realism. These include but are not limited to his use of direct and indirect lighting, contrast, composition, harmony, the creative use of the horizon although these were now rendered in abstract forms as well as the intensity of his light sources in his paintings.
For that initial show on abstract art, Magno was strongly influenced by the strong and bold textures of gestural abstractionism as expounded upon by Spanish artists Antonio Tapiez, Luis Feito and Manolo Millares. Since that time, in Year 2003, that Magno made the difficult yet epochal transition from figuration to abstraction he has had five sold-out solo exhibitions which proves his phenomenal success in abstraction. His oeuvre has been fast evolving though. He has taken elements of gestural abstractionism of Japanese artists the likes of Kenzo Okada and Saito and infused his own spiritual convictions.
This is now the point, in which Magno presents to his public his forthcoming milestone show, aptly titled "Firm Foundation".
"Firm Foundation" opens November 9 at Galerie Joaquin Main and runs until November 20. It will feature 40 works done by the artist over the past 16 months. It is a welcome sequel to his last major show titled "On Higher Ground" which opened successively in two galleries in June last year which were critical and commercial successes with the works eventually being sold out.
"Firm Foundation" firmly establishes Magno in the realm of today’s major abstract artists. In this show, what he notably does is he achieves an even deeper sense of spirituality. The canvases are less of the gestural abstractionism he started with five years ago and are now more meditative in form and substance. The major works for this show are the 42" x 72" "Joyful Heart", the 48" x 60" "Hint Of Gold", the 36" x 48" "Bread of Life", the 30" x 60" "Blaze of Glory", and the 48" x 48" "Shield of Faith".
"Firm Foundation’s" works are at once introspective, thought provoking and generally soothing to the soul. Befitting a milestone show indeed.
View Carlo Magno's Profile
Articles and Press Releases
November 19, 2005
‘Firm Foundation’ at Galerie Joaquin (Press Release)
November 9, 2005
Carlo Magno’s abstractions
November 7, 2005
Figuration disciple completes transition to abstraction |
