A Tale Of Two Masters

Some 65 years ago, in 1938 to be exact – a young staff artist of the J. Elizalde and Company took an early evening stroll along downtown Avenida Rizal. Walking past rows of shops, movie houses and panciterias, he dodged the rush-hour crowd. At the corner of Azcarraga, he chanced upon the proprietor of Ocampo’s Art Studio who greeted him with a firm handshake and a warm smile.

There was instant chemistry between the two. Long into the night, they talked about painting and art theories, about Picasso and Diego Rivera, about Amorsolo and Botong Francisco. That chance encounter began a close and lasting friendship between the young commercial artist, Cesar Legaspi, and Hernando Ocampo, then the dapper associate editor of the Herald Mid-Week Magazine.

Some might say the lives of those two maestros of visual arts ran along parallel lines:

Both resigned from their top executive positions in Philprom to become full-time artists in 1968.

Both were unanimously chosen by their peers to be chairmen of the Saturday Group, with Ocampo leading the group from 1968 to 1978, and Legaspi from 1978 to 1994.

Both became National Artist – Legaspi in 1990, and Ocampo in 1991.

Both were April-born, Ocampo in 1911, and Legaspi, six years later in 1917.

Cesar Legaspi was born on April 2, 1917 in Tondo, Manila. When he was only 11 months old, he contracted pneumonia after a visit to a carnival. This illness worsened to emphysema, which led to a series of major surgeries and traumatic memories of hospitals.

For the first five years of his young life, hospital corridors were his only playgrounds. Mang Cesar often recalled, "It marked me for life, both physically and physiologically." And for a time, afraid of relapses, the man almost became a recluse.

Ka Nanding’s childhood was not easy either. He was born on April 26, 1911 in crowded Maypajo, Caloocan. At 12, he was a bootblack and sold newspapers and tranvia tickets to augment the family income. At 17, he worked as cashier for a cabaret in Maypajo.

Being street-wise at an early age, Ka Nanding was a self-made man. Although he finished high school, he never went to college – except for a brief stint as a basketball player for Letran and for Far Eastern University. He did, however, settle for a year of creative writing at the Valenzuela School of Journalism under Manuel Arguilla.

Tall, robust and brimming with self-confidence, Ka Nanding was a rare combination of intellectual and artistic talent. Being well-read, he could talk about Hemingway, Chekhov and Faulkner – and then in the same breath, switch to Picasso and Klee. He grabbed every opportunity to lecture on "unity, coherence and emphasis" to any group that would listen to him. "These principles can be used by all," he would say. So, he was often introduced as "Ladies and gentlemen, eto na si Mr. Unity, Coherence and Emphasis".

In the late’ 30s, Ka Nanding worked as a clerk at Philippine Educations, then the largest bookstore in Manila. He discovered the colorful reproductions of Cubists in magazines, like Vanity Fair, Time and Life. Studying the pictorials, he was convinced that modern art was "doing something really significant." He believed that he coulds teach himself how to paint by reading and experimenting!

Mang Cesar had always acknowledge Ka Nanding’s influence on him. He once told Ding Roces, an HRO friend and co-founder of the Saturday Group, "When I met Nanding, I knew very little about painting except for the few books I had read and what I learned from school which was not much. He began to force-feed me with what he himself was reading. He was a voracious reader, and helped in my character development."

Infecting the young artist with his enthusiasm and his visions for serious painting, the pair rented a studio in Gastambide, Sampaloc. Bringing his easels and paints across town, Mang Cesar finally had ample space for his canvases which he filled with images of the waterfront life along Muelle de la Industria. However, man-about-town Ka Nanding had other plans for the use of the studio.

The war years disrupted their momentum for serious painting. In 1944, Mang Cesar was suddenly arrested by the Japanese Kempetai on suspicion of guerilla activities. He was kept in a crowded, airless dungeon in Fort Santiago for eight days. His lung ailment recurred. During the long months of recuperation in Cavite, he busied himself doing pencil portraits of the American GIs.

During the occupation, Ka Nanding was also suspected by the Japanese for working with the underground and was brought to Fort Santiago for interrogation. After liberation, he was again imprisoned in Muntinlupa, this time, for spying for the Japanese.

While in prison, Ka Nanding tried to hold on to his sanity. He spent hours studying the concepts of the color wheel, not knowing that his young friend and ward, Mang Cesar, suffered from color blindness since childhood. Ocampo’s chart helped Legaspi to readily identify the colors by their placement in his color palette. By working with complementaries and split complementaries in combination, Mang Cesar was able to attain richer tonality. However, immediately after their release from prison, their canvases still bore the trauma of their war experiences – in theme and in color. The post-war period happily brought together three major figures of the modern arts movement of the Philippines, known as the Neo-Realists: Hernando Ocampo (1911-1976), Vicente Manansala (1910-1981), and Cesar Legaspi (1917-1994). All three were declared National Artists in 1991, 1981 and 1990, respectively, and proudly, all three were members of the Saturday Group of Artists.

The early beginning of the Saturday Groups is almost legendary. How Ka Nanding Ocampo resigned as vice-president of Philprom in 1968, how he and friends Ding Roces, Tony Quintos and Enrique Velasco shared roast beef sandwiches and talked about art at Taza de Oro, how more artists and friends came to join them each succeeding Saturday afternoon. And the rest is history.

Later that year, Mang Cesar also resigned from the firm with a new burst of freedom and energy from a 5 to 9 job that had taken a toll on his health. Urged by Ka Nanding, Cesar finally walked out of the financial security of his advertising job to devote himself to full-time painting.

Together, Ka Nanding and Mang Cesar steered the Saturday Group for almost three decades. There were visits to art galleries and to homes of noted artists, with still life and landscape painting, portraitures, interaction and the usual nude sketching sessions.

When martial law was declared in 1972, nude sketching created a problem for the members. Firstly, because of fear factor, no artist appeared at Taza de Oro during the months of September and October. Secondly, rumors had it that nude sketching was pornography. And lastly, no model dared go nude.

The solution? Tiny Nuyda produced seven barchested male dwarfs from his restaurant, The Last Unicorn. Ka Nanding thought this was the last straw. In disgust, he declared, "Kung bawal ang nude sketching, bawal din ang unano sketching!"

Both Ka Nanding and Mang Cesar were flattered whenever we asked them for advice. One day, I approached Mang Cesar for his opinion on a rather overworked landscape. He looked at it, then at me and said "What you need is KISS!"

Blushing, I said to myself, "Wow, the guy still has a lot of fire!"

I was on cloud 9 until Malang nudged me and whispered, "What he means is Keep It Simple, Stupid!"

However, as a whole, the Saturday afternoon sessions were educational and fun. And the call for merienda was always announced in a special way – "Gutom na si Mang Cesar!"

During the late 1970s, Kulay Anyo ng Lahi was conceived "to educate the Filipino masses." Patterned after the wall murals of the University of Meuer, public places and buildings would have blowups of selected artworks. Mang Cesar chose the seawall at the end of Roxas Boulevard for his red, white and black "Bayanihan" mural. Unfortunately, this was totally demolished during the subsequent expansion of the boulevard.

Another heartbreaker was the disappearance of Ka Nanding’s "Green Revolution" in Cubao. The massive painting was covered with the construction of taller buildings in the EDSA-Cubao area. However, a deterrent against the success of the project was the use of ordinary house paints. Because of weather conditions, some painted murals faded, while other flaked off, unlike the frescos of past centuries.

Because of his experiments on form and color, Ka Nanding received several invitational grants from foreign governments to travel abroad. Unfortunately he declined each one because a fortune teller once predicted he would die in a plane crash!

Mang Cesar was not that supertitious. Of the many trips abroad, he felt his studies under Professor Goetz at the Academic Ranson in Paris in 1954 was the most rewarding. Goetz showed him the importance of tonal composition by doing studies in pencil or pen. He also encouraged the use of the palette knife for faster paint execution, especially on large canvases. Legaspi found this useful in doing his "Rock" series.

Though neo-realistic in spirit, both artists had different work and style methods. While Mang Cesar opted to remain in the figurative, transparent cubistic mode, Ka Nanding moved towards abstraction.

In the history of Philippine art, Ka Nanding’s paintings are uniquely distinctive. His figure-flame motif appears lyrical yet sensual. The imagery of his pictorial composition is not seen elsewhere. Methodically, he outlined and numbered each interlocking shape on the canvas according to a color code. This he did to achieve a composition of precise hue and tonal gradation. Often called Mr. De Numero, he sportingly ignored the teasing, saying the method solved any work interruption. He was always able to pick up and go on with his painting without losing his sense of design.

About his own work, Ka Nanding said, "In my pictures, I am more interested in how shapes, hues, values, textures and lines interact with one another in space, rather than preoccupied with the creation of new realities in terms of strains and stress, rather than the portrayal of emotions. I wish onlookers would stop looking for qualities which I have purposely eliminated from my pictures."

His exotic masterpiece, "Genesis" (1968) – the theater curtain of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Main Theater – manifests his genius as an abstractionist. He was a man before his time, a creator of visual music, a ground orchestrator of color, tone and texture.

Being a perfectionist, Mang Cesar never rushed his work. Inch by inch, space by space, he patiently worked on his "Jeepney," his "Rock," and his "Torso" series. So great was his reputation for excellence that often times, his canvases were bought even before the first brush stroke.

When the pressure to produce more work mounted, Mang Cesar invited two young Saturday Group artists (Ephraim Samson and Jing Malic), to assist him in applying the intial overall color foundation. Mang Cesar recalled then that he, too was a manchandor to Victor Edades and Galo Ocampo.

With his new work arrangement and with the skillful use of his palette knife, Mang Cesar’s output doubled. He felt more released, more fulfilled, though he knew time was running out.

Sadly, in 1991, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was determined to fight the Big C, and for four agonizing years, he bravely did. Pale and in pain, he insisted on showing up on Saturday afternoons to be with the group he loved so well.

Many critics say that the genius of this great but gentle soul lies in the five magnificent artworks: "Stairway" (1949), "Displaced Persons" (1949), "Man and Woman" (1945), "Street Incident" (1968), and "CCP Triptych" (1969).

Studying these masterpieces, one is mesmerized by the artist’s wealth of colors, his dynamic intellectual theme, hus great vitality for expression and his passion for his craft.

When he accepted the National Artist Award, Mang Cesar, then, paid tribute to the one source of his gift of creativity.

"I would like to thank the Lord that He chose to use my hand and my defective eye, to say what He wanted to say through my paintings, and that through these works of mine I was able to bring Him some glory," he declared.

I close this humble recollection of this two masters with these words of praise:

"Mabuhay si Mang Cesar!"

"Mabuhay si Ka Nanding!"

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The show April to Remember opened yesterday at the Saturday Group Gallery, located at the second floor of the Ali Mall in Cubao, Quezon City. Guests of honor during the opening were Cresencia Ocampo, Celeste Legaspi and Judy Araneta-Roxas. The show is on view until May 11.