Exhibitions

With a stellar multi-awarded international artistic career spanning over 70 years, Juvenal Sanso is one of Galerie Joaquin’s foremost exclusive artists. In his prime, Sanso has actively and consistently exhibited in Paris, France and Madrid, Spain, alongside his winter base and true home Manila, Philippines, while having solo exhibitions on occasion in important cities like New York, Washington, Barcelona, Rome, Spoleto, London, Mexico, and Singapore. No other Philippine-based artist can boast of the spectacular institutional line up that have collected his works, which include but is not limited to the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, USA), Metropolitan Museum of New York, Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Brooklyn Museum (New York, USA), Chicago Art Institute, Cleveland Museum of Art, Philadelphia Art Museum, San Francisco Art Museum, Yale University Art Museum, Musee d'Art Moderne (Paris, France), Cabinet des Estampes de la Bibliotheque National (Paris, France), and local museums like The National Museum of the Philippines, the Ateneo Art Gallery, the Ayala Museum, the Lopez Museum and Library, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Purita Kalaw Ledesma Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Manila, and Fundacion Sanso, a museum dedicated to preserving his legacy.

His artistic oeuvre is as manifold spanning painting, printmaking, photography, scenography and costume design for opera, textile design, fresco and mosaic. For his highly prolific artistic career, he has been recognized and awarded by the Philippine government, under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Presidential Medal of Merit in 2006. In the following year, he was awarded The Distinguished Cross of Isabela by King Juan Carlos I of Spain through Ambassador Luis Arias in recognition of his exemplary work across national boundaries. And in 2008, he was awarded Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture and Communications of the Republic of France.

As one of the most important Philippine artists, and one that has brought the country recognition for his work, Galerie Joaquin has enjoined younger artists to study and take inspiration for the various series, subjects, and styles Sanso has evolved through his long career. Artists were given free rein on which aspect of his art they can draw inspiration from, and interpret this in with their own artistry. This is not merely an homage to a great artist, but an active commitment of the gallery to instill in younger artists the need to study greatness to fast track that greatness in the younger artists under its charge. As an artist, Sanso is excellent in every way; garnering both commercial and critical success while staying true to the creative impetus that has made him an artist of great relevance since he started in the 1950’s. This exhibition hopes to draw from what Sanso defined as his understanding of Art; “that personal impact of an irreplaceable human life – humanity felt and expressed by an exceptional person,” and provide flashpoints from which to see the genius not only of Sanso, but of all the participating artists in this exhibition.