Self-Taught Masters Francisco “Paco” Gorospe x Cesar Buenaventura With Sculptures By Arnel Garcia

Transwing® Art Gallery invites everyone to a special year-end exhibition presenting selected and rare paintings by Francisco “Paco” Gorospe from our large collection and Cesar Buenaventura of the Mabini Art movement, featuring sculptures by Kapampangan artist Arnel Garcia.

In the book “Revisiting ‘Mabini Art’: Its Significance in the Development of Philippine Visual Arts,” Francisco “Paco” Gorospe (10th July 1939 – 22 September 2002) is described as the Pablo Picasso of the Philippines. Born in Binondo, Manila, Gorospe started his own gallery in the 1960s in A. Mabini St. where he made friends with progressive artists Roger San Miguel and Francisco Ello. What started as nightly sessions experimenting with techniques and style became collaboration in commissioned projects. At that time, the three artists were known as the “Mabini Triumvirate.”

While shifting from watercolor and crayon to oil as a self-taught artist, Gorospe studied the works of American artists Franz Kline and Andrew Wyeth. It was the Spanish cubist Picasso, however, who inspired his disregard for norms on lines and geometry to develop and pursue his own style in painting.

The exhibition features Gorospe’s different experimentations in styles and techniques on different subjects throughout his career. His paintings could be categorized in the following: Impressionism/Post-Impressionism (1957-1972); Primitivism (1970-1973); and, Expressionism (1972-1978, all of which has “a touch of native influence.” PAL itself described Gorospe, in its description for Gorospe’s cover painting of its playing cards, as “a Filipino artist consistently loyal to a native iconography.”

He incorporated his unique style of modernist colors and strokes in his transition from Impressionism through Expressionism towards Modernism. As Gorospe himself said in his 1974 interview with poet and novelist Gilbert Luis R. Centina III, “it is through a long transition period which involves experimentation and observation that an artist finally develops his own style.” Lydia Arguilla, founder of the Philippine Art Gallery (PAG), one of the first modern art galleries in the country, patronized the paintings of Gorospe. Since his exposure at the PAG, Gorospe had been selected as the Philippine representative at the 1962 Seattle World State Fair (Century 21 Exposition). In 1964, Gorospe was invited again to exhibit his paintings at the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair that highlighted mid-20th-century American culture and technology.

Paco Gorospe’s “Flower Vendor” was featured in Esso Mobile Magazine of American oil company Exxon Mobil in 1965. He was commissioned to produce “Sabungero” for the Philippine Airlines’ cover for playing cards in 1990 and 12 large industrial landscapes for the Voest-Alpine MCE Annual Report 1996. In 1995, “Sabong” became the cover of the first SBC Warburg Gaming Industry Review 1996 by the Swiss Bank Corporation following the establishment of its Manila office in 1995.

One of the Mabini artists whom Paco identified with was the impressionist Cesar Buenaventura (1922-1983) whose paintings are mostly warm rendition of rural and urban landscapes, seascapes, market scenes and farmers working in the field. He was also fond of the different hues of blue that instigate an impression of subdued and somber Manila by night.

Buenaventura himself was one of the prominent figures of Mabini Art which have been unfairly disparaged as cheap and commercialized art because of the public’s miseducation in art history. Dr. Pearl E. Tan, who curated the exhibition “Mabini Art Movement” at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in November 2013, wrote: “However, such disparaging aesthetic judgment and stigmatization prove to be unwarranted when Mabini Art is studied in its proper sociocultural, historical, and art-historical contexts. In the academe, Mabini Art has been relegated to the margins of the history of the Philippine Art owing to the pedagogical bias toward the aesthetics of contemporary arts which have developed from the modernist art movement, the antithesis of the school from which Mabini Art emerged.”

According to the book “The Struggle for Philippine Art” by Purita Kalaw-Ledesma and Amadis Ma. Guerrero, a rivalry between the Conservatives, espoused by now National Artist Fernando Amorsolo (ergo “Amorsolo school”), and the Victorio Edades-led postwar Modernists seethed as the two schools struggled for the direction of Philippine art. The emergence of Modernists became apparent when Edades held his one-man show at the Philippine Columbian Club Manila and challenged Amorsolo’s realism. Edades owed his style “consisting of a distorted image, rough brushstrokes, and indistinct bodies that were heavily influenced by Cezanne and Gauguin,” Dr. Tan wrote her M.A. thesis titled “Mabini Art: History, Practice and Aesthetics.”

“The moderns painted from different points of view, combining these in a harmonious way to come up with a beautiful painting…The conservatives, however, were bound by a strict tradition. They painted what they saw, and as closely as possible to the origin,” Kalaw-Ledesma and Guerrero wrote.

Following the controversial conservatives’ walkout from an Art Association of the Philippines (which Kalaw-Ledesma founded in 1948) competition in 1955, the conservatives its leading artists were formally educated at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts held their shows in front of Manila Hotel to easily attract the attention of local and foreign tourists who buy paintings as souvenirs. The group, later known as Academy of Filipino Artists, also held their exhibition in other areas of Ermita. The AFA became the Mabini Artists’ Association when some of the members set up their studios and galleries along Mabini St., one of the foremost commercial hubs of post-war Manila. Among the members of MAA were self-taught artists who faced challenges amid the growing popularity of “fine art” by formally educated “Makati artists” in widely publicized exhibitions by museums, art centers and high-end galleries.

The “Mabini Art Movement” produced national artists and outstanding conservatives such as Salvador Cabrera, Serafin Serna, Oscar Navarro, Cesar Amorsolo, Sr., Roger San Miguel, Rafael “Popoy” Cusi, and most notably, Cesar Buenaventura. His father, Teodoro Buenaventura, a renowned artist and distinguished UP School of Fine Arts professor, taught Cesar before his son became apprentice- assistant or protégé of Fernando Amorsolo himself.

Cesar had his first shot at the local art scene when Officers Club of the US Army’s South Pacific headquarters hosted his first solo exhibit in 1949. His artworks were also exhibited at the Art Association of the Philippines in 1956; at the Carnegie Endowment Center in Washington D.C.; in Italian cities of Florence and Naples in 1958; at Philam Life, sponsored by the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East; in his annual solo exhibitions at the Hong Kong Hilton President Hotel from 1965 to 1967; and, at the 1962 Seattle World State Fair and 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair, joining Gorospe in the Philippine pavilion. He also shared another exhibit with Gorospe in Zurich, Switzerland in 1965. Whereas Gorospe represented the modern art movement, Buenaventura championed the conservative school.

Buenaventura’s awards include the first prize at the 1950 National Art Content held every five years at the Far Eastern University, first prize at the Opening Art Exhibit in Luneta in 1957, and an Outstanding Landscape of the Year from the Academy of Filipino Artists. In 1955, he was given the honor of being among the country’s Top Ten Artists. The University of Sto. Tomas owns artworks of Buenaventura in their collection.

Joining the self-taught masters of the conservative and modern schools from Mabini is sculptor Arnel Garcia from Angeles City, Pampanga. Garcia’s resin sculptures often made from resin, mixed media, or Mt. Pinatubo ash always feature death masks that bring back the intriguing and fascinating human tradition of casting death masks before burial rites. Sculptures that were mixed with Mt. Pinatubo ash are inspired by the tragedies, sorrow, and search for hope that transpired after the catastrophic Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991. His works often focus on Filipino attitudes, good or bad, thus serving as a reminder, sometimes a work of protest, of who we truly are as people and a Nation.

Garcia won the Grand Prize in sculpture category at the Art Association of the Philippines 66th Annual Art Competition in 2013. He was also a Finalist in sculpture category and Honorable Mention in mixed media category of the Government Service Insurance System art competition in 2014. He also had a Special Citation at the 2014 Metrobank Art & Design Excellence. His works were often exhibited in Pampanga and Metro Manila, but he had as well exhibition at the Philippine Embassy Berlin in Germany. Aside from being an artist, Garcia is also an instructor of Kapampangan Studies, College of Business and Accountancy and College of Hospitality Management at the Holy Angel University in Angeles City. He is currently the president of Kapampangan Manguleampong Gugulis and public relations officer of Katipunan dareng Talasaliksik at Talaturung Kapampangan.