Sanso's Homecoming

Juvenal Sanso is home again, and in a few years, he’ll be staying for good. The jovial, energetic 73-year-old Catalan with a Filipino soul has been residing in a studio in Paris for the past 48 years, and feels that Europe has given him enough adventures to last a lifetime, but that he prefers to retire in the country he has loved the most.

This is not to say that Juvy is going to waste his time sitting in EDSA traffic, though. He has plans of going around the country ("I haven’t had a chance to visit Ilocos yet," he confesses), and return from time to time to the international art museums that are his artistic inspiration and visual joy.

His newest series of landscapes and still lifes, recently shown at the Megamall Art Center during its 10th year anniversary, documents the length and breadth of his learning and knowledge in the craft of painting – he still calls himself a painter, by the way, not an artist. The singularity of the style, with its variations of form, can be traced to a specific personality of the maker, and not to how he pleases the audience by just putting pretty colors and ideas on canvas. The almost classical discipline of sticking to the subject matter with fanatical devotion is an indicator of how far Sanso has gone as a painter dedicated to his craft, without fear of public rejection or critical scrutiny. We can see a slight difference in his works, though, as if Sanso is already summing up his painterly life: landscapes with a "soft focus" effect, done by repeated glazing that creates a mystical orange lighting, as if seeing beached coral beds in volcanic twilight; and still lifes with a "hard focus" crispness that brings out the sharpness of abstracted floral details versus green foliage and blue background. In a quiet, unpretentiously Castillan house in Makati, he shares his golden life with The Philippine STAR, and reveals just how he could gather the forces needed to paint with a rigor (he still paints every day, even when he’s on vacation) matched only by 30-year-olds.

PHILIPPINE STAR: What was your inspiration for doing the current series of landscapes and still lifes?

JUVENAL SANSO: It is an amalgamation of different views and experiences that I have stored in my memory bank. The spirit of most of my landscapes, as you know, comes from my long association with the seascapes around Brittany, in northern France, starting in the late 1950s. What only a few people know is that I am also mixing this imagery with the rocky escarpments that I have seen in Montalban, Rizal (where we evacuated for a time during World War II), as well as the seaside cliffs and beach coral rocks in Matabungkay, Batangas. I haven’t been to Brittany for the past 20 years, and so these landscapes are all done from memory. Some of the spidery, castle-like formations and structures that you see in the other seascapes are based on the baklad or Tagalog fishing traps.

So you see, a considerable part of my landscape repertoire is based not only on a foreign landscape, but also on definite Philippine landscape elements, although these were not tackled as a serious subject matter during my time. In the case of my still lifes, they have a long historical association dating back to my student days at the Eccole des Beaux Artes when I started doing etchings in the atelier of M. Edouard Goerg in 1955. This eventually led to the Villa Nova series of oval-shaped bouquets. Ever since, I have done a whole body of work based on the floral motif, such as the "Bulaklak" exhibition at the Megamall some years back. This concentration has allowed me to concentrate on the subtleties of the forms of the subject, not necessarily on the differences of the subject matter itself. I believe that as you get older, the less you change. Conversely, the more changeable you are, you show your immaturity. You have to have your own voice to speak, rather than find your voice in someone else’s work. Anyone can identify my work as a Sanso, even without looking at the signature.

What is the important thing for you to do as an artist in the present time?

I’d like to make one point clear: when I repeat myself, I feel that it is an enriching experience, because the aspect of composition is what makes any painting a vital aspect–its changeability within the same form. This is what differentiates a great painter from a mere painter. Look at the works of Rembrandt and Van Gogh. How many self-portraits and landscapes did they make? Dozens, and yet each painting is a wonder to behold. The limited supply of elements allows one to discipline his senses. We can go by what we have, and then add variety. I paint to understand myself; slavish copying of one’s own style, on the other hand, is dangerous. All my works are different from each other by subtle nuances, which you will observe if you only have a complete understanding of my work. On the other hand, I cannot imitate anybody; I only end up painting like Sanso. I am well beyond my UP Faura days when I did Incubus and The Sorcerer; those were works that were informed by my wartime experience, a form of psychological catharsis that I had to expunge from my system. It was like my experience with barbecue: I never realized why I had such a horrid phobia for its smell until I remembered that it was the same smell as that of charred and burning human flesh during the Liberation of Manila.

In my "golden years," I would like to call this, my artistic current artistic phase, "Hypermaturity." I accept my age very nicely. If ever I wanted to start things all over again, it would be when I was 35, when I was in Paris studying as a struggling artist.

What are your plans now?

Well, when I reach 75, which will be by 2005, I will return to Manila for good. I might still be going to Paris after that, but only for about two to three months a year. I’ll slowly go into this "reverse" mode for the next couple of years. While in Manila, I’ll be doing my painting, sculpture, and writing about my experiences. Personally, I feel that I have been quite emotionally involved to give an impartial answer about my painterly style over the past 10 years. I’ll say that in terms of subject matter, I haven’t changed that much. But in terms of color, I have leapt into different extremes: blues, greens, and gold, as well as my trademark reds, oranges, and browns. Color inebriates and excites me. Contrasts, especially between primary colors, give me joyful associations. My theme is myself: it is what I am. I’d also like to do a lot more traveling in the Philippines. You don’t realize it’s so huge until you’ve gone from end to end. And unlike Europe, travel here is an adventure. I’d like to meet more people, go to different cultures and museums, and experience their lives.

What can you say about the art scene in Manila?

Manila has many possibilities for any artist. I started the barong-barong paintings in 1957, and no lesser a witness than Alfredo Roces had said so. After this, of course, came the deluge. In Paris, the audience thought that my barong-barongs were "Gothic" in spirit, because they arose out of the water like cathedrals. It’s a Rorscach effect across cultures, I think: what a people can comprehend is based on their cultural experience of that form. That’s why here, my Brittany series were often mistaken for Matabungkay. In terms of the art materials in the country, we have very many to choose from. It is the artists that concern me, though. Without naming anybody (which is safer for me, so that I don’t leave anybody out), I would say that many Filipino artists have very viable works, even in comparison to European artists. My advice to them is to be steady workers of the discipline they have chosen. In other words: never stop painting. Think of your work as long-term investments, not short-term profits. Never water down your style; and don’t trap yourself in a situation that you can’t escape from.

In my experience, saying no to career above the quality of work saved my existence from being completely trivialized. I was never a "flavor of the month" artist because I refused to commercialize and prostitute my work for the sake of money. Back in the 1950s, I was approached by powerful women of the Paris social scene, an Italian couturier and an American socialite approached me. They each asked me to do certain "favors" for them in return for unlimited financial backing and success. I told them off. I decided that the only way to achieve real success is to work for it myself. That’s how I got recognized by American patrons, in Paris and Venice, which led me to fantastic exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and New York’s exclusive Weyhe Gallery I refused to coddle these shark dealers who promise you so much money in return for your doing a regular supply of paintings for them, like 50 a year. I’m not that kind of person. When I paint, it is because first and foremost to satisfy myself, and not because I am beholden to this patron or that dealer. People ask me: Are you Filipino? I may not be a Filipino by citizenship, but I strongly uphold the fact that I belong to a Philippine school of artists, period, and that is the Moderns especially from the UP School of Fine Arts at Padre Faura, in terms of subject matter and theme.