The art of Pancho Piano

His name makes people think of a singer or at least someone musical, but on meeting him (or reading his bio), they are surprised to discover that Pancho Piano is not a musician, and that his real passion has nothing to do with music at all. Rather, he is a visual artist.

An Economics graduate of the University of Nueva Caceres, Pancho felt art was his calling and decided to pursue further studies in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines as a Jose Joya scholar from 1984 to 1987.

It eventually became a lifelong career, but Pancho has mainly distinguished himself by being the first Filipino artist to exhibit leather art in the Philippines.

Aside from leather, Pancho has also worked with stained glass as a medium. He has executed numerous murals and designs in various cities and municipalities throughout the Bicol Region, such as Naga City, Daraga, Guinobatan, Camalig, Polanngui, Ligao, Pio Duran, Sto. Domingo, Legaspi City, and Tabaco City, plus the Mindanao region. His works can also be found in Boracay and Pampanga. In Metro Manila, they are in Quezon City, Mandaluyong, Pasig, Caloocan and abroad, in Japan, Saipan and Palau.

Two of Pancho’s art works from his solo exhibit Voyaging in Luminous Space that opened last May 24 at the Art Center in SM Megamall

But Pancho’s creations are not just ordinary works of art. They are works meant to tell a story of a culture, a province and a people.

“My paintings and stained glass designs focus on Bicolano myths and traditions,” says the artist, who can practically be considered an ambassador of the Bicol Region to the rest of the world.

Because of him, more and more people have come to know about Bicolano culture.

To date, and from out of his native Bicol, he has mounted more than 40 solo exhibitions and participated in over 150 group exhibitions in the Philippines, Japan, Saipan and the United States, France, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Brunei, Georgia, Innsbruck, Australia, and Bratislava, Slovakia.

He has gone from success to success in recent years. Pancho has won over 10 major national competitions in the Philippines, including Finalist at the 1997 Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) Centennial Mural Painting Competition, and the 1998 AAP Centennial Painting competition. Pancho received Artist of the Year awards a total of 12 times by various institutions. He was also featured by ABS-CBN, and his work has also appeared in 10 coffee-table books.

He has traveled extensively to the United States and Europe these past few years, and these travels have become the core of his art. In fact, these travels that have inspired him to create the artworks he will be showing in his currently ongoing one-man show titled Voyaging in Luminous Space that opened last May 24 at the Art Center in SM Megamall.

According to art critic Alice Guillermo, “these voyages open for him new perspectives of space and the universe. For it is from his recent travels that he has produced an abstract series of paintings, which he has assembled for the present show. In these, the artist conveys the original experience of travel, expansion and freedom.”

Pancho Piano is the embodiment of a Filipino artist who truly speaks of his land and people.