Cuevas a sense of reality

CEBU, Philippines - It seems ages ago since I spent those precious moments with Maestro Martino Abellana, the guru of the Fine Arts Program of UP College Cebu…imbibing what I could from the Font of Unselfish Wisdom. He had an effervescent boyish enthusiasm even in his ripe age of about past 70, at the time. Through UPCC Fine Arts, I got up close with various kinds of contemporary artworks, as I was a judge in the Dean Jose Joya Awards competitions. UPCC is the pioneering center of Fine Arts in Cebu, from where many local artists and art teachers graduated.

The respected abstract artist Wenceslao “Tito” Cuevas started late in the formal pursuit of his creative Muse. It was only after his two-semester stint at the UPCC Fine Arts, already in his 40s in the late 1970s, that he started to paint seriously. Yet, that early, he was not happy with realistic renderings, as most works he saw he found wanting, be it in perspective, in overall realism or what he considered as no better than a photographed version of the subject.

“I was falling under the spell of non-objective abstract expressionism without fully realizing it,” recalled Cuevas. His art predilection attained a name when he went to the US for the first time, in the early 1990s, and visited New York City – the Center of Abstract Expressionism, an independent art movement outside of Europe established in the mid-1940s. Nonetheless, he could not find any set definition of the movement, only that at its flowering in the 1960s it advocated art as “non-representational and chiefly improvisational.” Exactly reflecting his inner undefined urges!

Cuevas found a kindred spirit in Jackson Pollock whose violent splashings of paint on huge canvas flat on the floor merited hostile reactions, or in Willem de Kooning’s weird women images, or in Franz Kline’s “forceful and boldly dramatic” original creations, or that of Mark Rothko’s simple and lambent renderings. They are all pillars of Abstract Expressionism, a movement that sprang from the individualistic styles of Spanish masters Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro. After America, Tito evolved into his personal style, of transferring pure emotion on canvas.

Attempts to explain the visual assault one gets in front of a Cuevas painting fall short, if at all successful. The swallowing magnetism of his Cuevas black cutting across a sea of vermillion, or swirling into a terrifying hollow, bespeaks of a self-assured brushstroke that brings anger or frustration up front to the viewer. Disturbing? Definitely! Engaging? Surely!

In the late 1990s, he took a short course on Restoration and Conservation at the National Museum. What followed was what he called a “transitory period” when he did his exquisite Madonna & Child figurative works with real gold paint as accents on wood or on stone, aside from on canvas. “I wanted to revive religious art in Cebu. I began to collect eclectic old things and religious images, which you can still see cluttered around my place. You know, before I start creating a religious work, I first pray,” Cuevas intimated.

After his cataract eye operations — on both eyes — which freed him from almost total blindness, Tito was finally able to“see” his works. He now paints with less bold colors, but retains his vintage black. “I enjoy the liberating qualities of Abstract Expressionism, allowing me the purest self expression through the dynamics of colors, textures and forms.”

He concludes, “And if art is a search for reality, then there is nothing more real than what I feel in coming up with an artwork, because of the unbridled emotional passion involved in its making.” (FREEMAN)