One for the books: The great archives of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma

What saved me from being consumed by materialism — the pursuit of money—was my love for the arts,” wrote Purita Kalaw-Ledesma in her autobiography, And Life Goes On, “the self-fulfillment I derived from intangible but beautiful things, from reading poetry, from relishing the movement of dance.”

It has been decades since Purita first assembled a scrapbook. With the many hundred articles gleaned from newspapers and magazines, Purita’s collected fragments captured half a century of local art, tracing its rise and becoming the emblem and foundation of a great art archive known today.

At present, the National Gallery of Singapore Research Centre houses the digitized tapes of the PKL archives. Ada Ledesma-Mabilangan, daughter of Purita and president of the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation, delivered a lecture last Jan. 21, at the Singapore National Gallery, discussing the life and practice of her mother: a legacy seamlessly woven into the history of Philippine modern art.

“Teodoro Kalaw taught my mother how to maintain a scrapbook and the importance of archival documentation,” says Ada. In their home, Teodoro kept an archive of objects from history’s celebrated heroes: the wheelchair of Mabini, papers on the trial of Andres Bonifacio, the love letters of Gregorio del Pilar, and the manuscripts of Rizal.

Although the artifacts were lost in the Japanese occupation, it was Purita who continued the practice of collecting, and documented the emerging heroes of the art world. 

In 1948, just as the world was recovering from the damages of war, Kalaw-Ledesma was collecting history’s remnants in her scrapbooks: assembling notes, invitations, posters and photographs. In that year, she founded the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP), a collective that started with a UP alumni gathering, and has since then grown to include graduates from different schools, building a collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and mixed media.

“She focused on Philippine rather than Western art because that’s what she knew best and could afford,” says Ada. “Thus was born one of the best collections of Philippine modern art assembled during a period when very few were collecting.”

The Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation continues to conserve the scrapbooks, art books and rare artworks in the collection. Focusing on the luminous life and legacy of its founder, it will be launching a book titled The Life and Times of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma, written by art historians Purissima Benitez-Johannot, Patrick D. Flores, Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez and NSG curator Lisa Chikiamco.

From the rise of technology to the astronomical auction prices that local art now commands, changes and developments continue to reconfigure the shifting landscape of art. The Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation holds firm to the mission begun by its matriarch, while encouraging new research based on the PKL archives, launching programs supporting new writers and artists in the industry, and furthering the conversation on art through books, lectures, seminars, symposia and exhibitions. 

Art and articles have always been known to record, mimic and evoke the spirit of the changing times, yet in the endless production of text and visuals, there is a need to lend permanence to the records, in order to educate and urge a new generation to build a legacy of their own.

“Our mission is to bring to light the overlooked, undervalued, unappreciated areas of Philippine culture,” says Ada. “That is what Purita Kalaw-Ledesma did in her lifetime. This is what we hope to achieve in our own way and for our own time.”