Even amongst the idealist crowd of modernist artists, Jerry Elizalde Navarro stands out due to his uncompromising stance. Unlike some artists, Navarro eschews the idea of sticking to one painting style, consistently changing styles from minimalism to figuration and then abstraction and everything in between.
\n“Somebody went inside the Met Museum during my 1996 retrospective, and he said ‘Gee, I thought there were twelve artists who did the whole thing,’” he told Reuben Cañete as he wrote in his 2020 BluPrint article. “To me, a real artist shoots in so many directions, and he shouldn’t give a hoot about what people will say. I don’t believe in style. To me, it’s a point of submission.”
\nAs such, it is not a shock to see Navarro delve into mixed-media art. A prolific artist, Navarro’s mixed media pieces encompass the multiplicity of his art, as evidenced by this 1970 All Systems Go! His use of pointillistic elements is noticeable as he used several dots to portray the naked torso of a woman and even had these dots going outside the painting’s border. The painting itself is done on the back part of a metal piece as various wires cross from one machinery-like installation to another.
\nAll Systems Go! emphasizes one of Navarro’s strengths: his nude portraiture. “Without question, where Navarro contributed greatest to Philippine modern art is in the genre of nude painting,” Cid Reyes once said in his book J. Elizalde Navarro. “It was Navarro who introduced a differentiating element absent in the works of others: a fresh and outright eroticism.” Indeed, even through the visual barrier of pointillism, this piece manages to bring across a fresh sense of eroticism usually only seen in realistic portraits. When taken into the larger context, the nude itself only occupies a small part of the piece but it brings life to the otherwise monochromatic piece.
\nAll Systems Go! is a dynamic configuration of Navarro’s artistic sensibilities. This work highlights his affinity for the threedimensional as he adds depth and intensity to make this more interesting, creating a work that embodies his free-spiritedness, both as an artist and in his personal life.
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