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SANSO: Pioneer of Expressionism
Fresh from the triumph of his landmark exhibit at the Mandarin Suites of Gateway Mall, JUVENAL SANSO is once again digging deep into his treasure trove to take art aficionados one more step back in time as he bares another facet of his long and illustrious career.
As part of a series of exhibits and exhibitions in celebration of Sanso's 80th year, Galerie Joaquin, the leading provider of Philippine modern art masterpieces in Manila and Singapore in cooperation with SM Megamall will be presenting a different exhibit showcasing 80 never-before exhibited artworks from the internationally renowned artist's career.
Billed as "SANSO: Pioneer of Expressionism" the exhibit opens 6:30 pm, Friday, December 4, 2009 at The Art Center, 4th floor, Building A, Megamall, Mandaluyong City. It will run at the popular venue until December 16 .As part of the festivities, three artworks from the master will be raffled off to the evening's guests on December 4. For more information, please call 7239418 or 7239253 or visit www.juvenalsanso.com.
The recently concluded survey show at the Mandarin titled Sanso: A Show of Shows gave Sanso followers a peek at his early years with a few rare works from his personal collection. This set off a clamor among art lovers for more of these works, thus setting the stage for a show that focuses on his early years as an artist.
"SANSO: Pioneer of Expressionism" takes art lovers back to that phase in his career in the late 1940s and early 1950s when he pioneered expressionism in the Philippines, sowing the seeds for a whole generation of Filipino expressionists.
Among these never before exhibited works are paintings done after World War II when like many of his generation, the young Sanso carried with him the anguish and deep scars of war.
As art critic Reuben Canete says these works were "borne out of the pain and horror that (Sanso) experienced during the Liberation of Manila in February 1945" early works from 1947 to 1956 convulsed with the anguish and alienation felt by many Filipinos as we lost loved ones and rebuilt from the ashes of devastation, clearing ruins, and burying memories of that horrible event deep inside our collective subconscious."
"SANSO: Pioneer of Expressionism" will present the artist’s works depicting the scenes of desolation in war torn Manila that Sanso came upon as he went to study in the heavily bombed UP Fine Arts Faura campus and its new campus in Diliman. There on his canvases were the unfortunate souls that roamed the streets, the destitute individuals in whom the subliminal pain and anger he felt found expression.
It was also at this time that Sanso had his first turn in the limelight when he won the plum prize in the AAP Annual Art Competition two years in a row (1950 and 1951). His seminal work Incubus, Canete says "can arguably be called the first Filipino Expressionist painting in terms of the treatment and subject matter "depicting a horribly disfigured beggar staring at the viewer" this terrifying vision of humanity (that) seems to conjure that demon of sleep which brings on nightmares, the incubus."
Also in the exhibit are Sanso’s European paintings, drawings and prints done in his Rome and Paris period in the 1950s. The Expressionistic dynamic is again most evident in these works showing Sanso’s endless experimentations with disfigured faces, skulls, an screaming heads in black, a horrible "nightmare" from which he still had to emerge.
This period is then followed by his rediscovery of still life and landscape done in the serene countryside his French acquaintances brought him to, marking a catharsis and his journey from darkness to the light.
But as Canete says, "Sanso’s bountiful experimentations with brightly-colored rock-filled landscapes and vaguely coral-like floral bouquets would not have been possible without its basis deep within the bowels of Expressionist despair that burned his earlier works with a dark despondency.
"SANSO: Pioneer of Expressionism" brings together these two phases of Sanso’s works, the early Expressionist paintings, drawings, and prints mostly in black and white; and the later colorful landscapes and still lifes. These later works owe their existence to the moment of conversion from dark to light, and from despair to a renewal of hope, a redemption of the artist’s humanity resulting from the guidance of others who also knew what suffering meant, and how one can prevail by looking at life in a more positive note. |
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