{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":122,"auction_id":1,"set_id":1,"lot_number":"86","artist":"Mauro Malang Santos (1928 - 2017)","title":"Escapulario","starting_price":700000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 1967 (lower right)","medium":"acrylic on canvas","size":"20” x 20” (51 cm x 51 cm)","property":"PROPERTY FROM THE DON J. ANTONIO ARANETA COLLECTION","coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":"The Luz Gallery, 45-Piece One-Man Exhibit, Makati,
\nNovember 21 - December 5, 1967","literature":"\nAraneta, Antonio S., ed., 1030 R. Hidalgo: Volume II, Legacy in Art.\nManila: Mara, Inc., 1986. Full-color photograph and painting description on page 147.\nRoces, Alfredo, Mauro Malang Santos, and Eric Torres. The Art of Malang:\nCommentaries by Alfredo Roces and Eric Torres. Makati: Luz Gallery, 1967.\nPublished on the occasion of Malang’s exhibition, 45-Piece One-Man Exhibit,\nat The Luz Gallery from November 21 to December 5, 1967. Black-and-white\nphotograph on page 6.","write_up":"Escapulario encapsulates a profound shift in Malang’s art and career during the 1960s. For a person who originally started as a prolific cartoonist (Malang was the genius behind the first English daily comic strip, “Kosme, the Cop, Retired,” for The Evening Chronicle.), Malang would gravitate towards serious painting in the late 1960s, formally presenting his first set of serious works at his landmark sophomore exhibition in 1967 at The Luz Gallery: “45-Piece One-Man Exhibit,” in which the work at hand was showcased.
Malang’s said exhibition at the Luz Gallery signaled his triumphant coming-of-age, his emergence as an artist to be reckoned with.
In a June 1985 interview (which would eventually be published in the landmark book Conversations on Philippine Art), art critic Cid Reyes asked Malang: “You were originally better known as a cartoonist. Doesn’t this background prejudice people from accepting you as a serious artist?” Malang answered: “In some ways, yes. To some people, I’m still a cartoonist. But I just keep on painting. Actually, I’m a late starter. I started doing serious painting only in 1967 when I had a one-man show at The Luz Gallery. [Actually,] my first one-man show was at the Philippine Art Gallery, but they were semi-cartoons that served as a transition between my cartooning and serious painting. But cartooning helped me a lot. I developed control of my hand and developed my own way of thinking.”
Eminent art critics Alfredo Roces and Eric Torres gave valuable insights into Malang’s Luz Gallery show and his artistic evolution.
In his essay Into New Country, Roces succinctly tells of Malang’s progression as an artist, from his humble beginnings as a prolific cartoonist to the serious painter he became in the 1960s, fostering a style he would be mainly known for throughout his career. “When he first began, he was a cartoonist and illustrator,” Roces writes. “Malang then took to lighthearted social commentary, portraying cartoon like figures in the midst of city bustle. Soon enough, the cartoon-like figures evolved into stylized human forms, with their faces adorned only with eyes, while the backgrounds showed the clutter and the tempo of city life.”
However, the late 1960s showed Malang beginning to explore abstraction, albeit retaining that child-like naivety of his cartoonist heydays, as seen in Escapulario. Present in his new style is a profound elaborateness of different elements and a flattened perspective that allows for a more heightened exploration of ornamental design, fostering his highly imaginative sense of color and the exuberant intricacy he had started to employ. There is a convolution of elements. Yet, due to his design instincts, Malang situates them in an orderly manner. (Malang was actually dapper in appearance. “Everytime I’m introduced to people, they say things like, “Malinis ang suot mo, wala kang bigote, hindi mahaba ang buhok mo, wala kang hikaw,” says the artist to Cid Reyes.)
Roces continues: “Malang’s vignettes then progressively mellowed into more serious paintings of squatters’ shanties and rural scenes. At times, they were playful and cartoon-like, with simple colors and many playful situations depicted. At other times, the work turned closer to abstract arrangements of rectangular shapes and textural play, the barong-barong clutter and pattern serving as the setting. Malang, during this period, showed some influences of Luz in the depiction of the figure. There was much interest in the effects of sponge patterns, and even collage…”
Torres also describes Malang’s maturity. “He is painting larger pictures and depopulating them. He is becoming increasingly abstract, less anecdotal, but more gorgeously decorative. One can make out familiar objects, mostly landscapes and architectural subjects…He still uses bright, fiesta colors that should please his old fans; but he is also now discovering the richness of a color scheme based on sepias, ochres, dark browns, greens, and black for “nocturnal” scenes that might win him new fans.” (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":2800000,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":2800000,"userBid":5926,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":3364480,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":97,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/1/1/lot/86.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":85,"next":87,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}