Sanso: All art, all heart

Artist Juvenal Sanso is in the thick of a flurry of last-minute arrangements for his upcoming show when we drop in on him at his Bel-Air home, where he welcomes us in his characteristic Old World gentlemanly manner. The airy house that has been his base for the past year since relocating from Paris, where he had lived for more than 50 years, displays more than a little testament to the artist’s personal history: it is inspired by Spanish Revival architecture, a nod to the Sanso family roots in Catalunia (the same birthplace of Salvador Dali and Joan Miro, to name a few of the region’s favorite sons), and is fitted with ornate grille work from the family’s wrought-iron business, Arte Español.

The show he is preparing for is opening on Nov. 4, at the Mandarin Oriental Suites, Araneta Center. Dubbed “Premium Sanso: A Show of Shows” will, as the title suggests, offer the public a rare panoramic look at the artist’s massive body of works spanning decades and cutting across various creative media — painting, drawing, printmaking, photography.

The show has been timed to coincide with an approaching personal milestone. “The last day of the show, the 23rd, falls on my birthday,” the artist explains. Asked how many years he would be celebrating then, he replies, “Seventy.” Had he not broken into chuckles, I would have believed him despite the mischievous glimmer in his eyes.

He certainly has maintained his youthful and jovial manner, and quite literally the spring in his step. “I go up and down the house many times during the day,” he says, pointing to his studio on the third floor. “For the exercise, too. And when I’m showing off, I take two steps at a time.”

The truth is that in a few weeks the artist, whose family moved to the Philippines from Spain when he was only four years old, will be celebrating his 80th year in the world. It has been a wild and interesting ride for the artist who had been a bus conductor during the reconstruction years following the war, and a scrap metal collector for the family business shortly after (“scavenger” he likes to say).

“The balancing act on the bus collecting payments proved useful,” Sanso says. “When I started going to the Alps, I learned how to ski very quickly and everybody was impressed, di nila alam konduktor kasi ako noon.”

Many experiences and achievements later, including further education at Ecole Nationale Superiore in Rome and the Academie des Beaux Arts in Paris and, later on, including knighthood and its equivalent for his contribution to the arts in three countries (he has been accorded the distinguished Cross of Isabela by the King of Spain, the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Artes et des Lettres by the French Government, and the Presidential Medal of Merit Award by the Philippine Government), Sanso remains eager for new things. Where others would be suitably and quite rightly impressed by how long they’ve lived and what they’ve done, Sanso says, “I’m going to need at least another 50 to do everything else I want to do.”

The Life and Times and Art of Juvenal Sanso

The body of work of Juvenal Sanso runs parallel to the struggles and triumphs of his life, and it is well known in art circles, particularly among collectors religiously following the evolution of his art, that the stages may be categorized by tone and subject.

The earliest works, especially the award-winning ones that startled the local art scene so steeped in the dreamy, sunlit images of the Amorsolo school of painting, are among the darkest of his career. He had been a student of Amorsolo at the University of the Philippines’ College of Fine Arts and says, “I would have wanted to paint that way,” but the horror of the war was not something that could be shelved, at least in his art. In 1951, he won first prize at the both the oil (for “Sorcerer”) and watercolor (for “Incubus”) competitions of the prestigious Art Association of the Philippines; both works are, he admits “very, very dark,” angst-filled and grotesque.

“I think I may have very well been the first Expressionist in the country,” he says.

The war that had just come to a close had left deep scars, physically, emotionally and psychologically — during the war, an raid bomb that had denoted just a few feet away and threw him across the room caused serious, lifelong damage to one ear. And for many years after the war, he continued to suffer paralyzing nightmares that for a very long time he could only talk about with a few of his closest friends.

Among them was his friend and mentor, Yves le Dantec, the son-in-law of the great French Impressionist painter Georges Roualt. It was le Dantec and his family that introduced Sanso to the northern French countryside that inspired the celebrated Brittany series of paintings featuring rock formations and seascapes. The many summers he spent there, and in the company of the le Dantec family, proved therapeutic.

In an article he wrote for the Philippine STAR in September last year, Sanso remembers the shared experience of the war that sealed his friendship with Yves le Dantec: “(Le Dantec’s experiences) were lived as an adult while mine were that of a ‘child-adolescent’ — this, I think, made me a more pathetic witness for him which went to his heart. He also could unveil his own dark shadows and tunnels. It turned out to be our own fortress and secret confessional of the unutterable.”

Now, it seems, Sanso has found the voice to speak the unutterable. “I was tortured during the war,” he tells us. There is a perceptible struggle to tame his emotions, to soothe his mind of the trauma, as he narrates being beaten up and tortured by a gang of Japanese soldiers during the war, and left for dead along a stretch of the Pasig River.

“I have to talk about this,” the artist says. He is somber but determined as he recounts, in great detail, the brutality of what would have been just another afternoon during the Japanese Occupation. There seems to be no apparent singular trigger for the new desire to let it all out now, except that one day, he directed his driver towards the area along the river to revisit the spot where he had been tortured. There he found, to his everlasting relief, that the injuries that have plagued him for years — even decades — are no longer as crippling as they had once been.

The Stories of His Life

It’s hard to imagine that such have been the experiences of a man who, even now, beams over the small, child-like delights, like crayons and a paper placemat at restaurants (on which he proceeded to draw a flower, then sign it, tempting me to steal and frame it). An afternoon with Sanso is an entertaining one at the least, filled with anecdotes (often hilarious) and insights from a life in pursuit of art.

Once, on a trip to Kalibo to witness the Ati-Atihan, he was told that it was best to arrive with face already painted, so he gamely prepared aboard the plane. Other passengers were eager to be just as ready, so he willingly obliged and painted their faces as well. “When we emerged from the plane, kami lang ang may makeup!”

It’s easy to see where the rich colors and bright bouquets that dominate his recent works come from — a consistently hopeful and positive spirit. And the seascapes, with their serene blue skies and quiet white moons, are telling of his frame of mind.

Over the years, his art, while keeping to the same style, has continuously transformed, informed by his experiences (he had also been a production designer in France, as well as one for textile) and other pursuits, including a seemingly tireless love for cinema and travel.

The upcoming November show is not the largest gathering of Sanso’s works. In 1974, he held a 25-year retrospective at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. He followed it up with another retrospective in 1976, in commemoration of the IMF Summit in Manila (during which 14 new hotels rose in Metro Manila and changed the cityscape), with 1,000 works on display. And SM Megamall’s Artwalk famously opened with 16 galleries holding simultaneous Sanso exhibitions.

But the works assembled for “Premium Sanso” will provide audiences with an even greater appreciation of his art; it will introduce them to the heart of the man.

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“Premium Sanso” is slated from Nov. 4 to 24 at The Sapphire Ballroom, Mandarin Oriental Suites, fourth floor, Gateway Mall, Cubao, Quezon City.