July 1 - October 30, 2015
ETCHED IN HISTORY: SANSÓ AND THE ART OF THE PRINT
Sansó Retrospective Print Exhibition
Fundacion Sansó
Museo Sansó is pleased to offer to the public a retrospective of Juvenal Sansó's fine art prints. Featured in the show are more than around seventy pieces his rare and important prints from the 1950s and the 1980s, along with a number of his original copper plates and experimental works. Also in the show is the print "Moonglow" which won for Sansó the Print of the Year Award from the Cleveland Print Society in 1963 and is part of several works that the Cleveland Art Museum has of Sansó in its collection.
Working with master printmaker Pandy Aviado, the museum is also launching a special inaugural edition of an extremely limited series of re-struck prints, including The Flower Market, which Sansó considers as his best work in the Black Series. This and other important art prints will be made available in a once-in-a-lifetime event as a fundraiser for the museum's activities.
Juvenal Sansó is reputed to be the first ever Philippine artist to have a solo exhibition comprising purely of fine art prints. In his 1957 first one-man show at the Philippine Art Gallery, the young Sansó, who trained under Edward Goerg, a leading light in French Expressionism, at the École Nationale des Beaux Artes in Paris, presented a selection of copper plate etchings that set him apart from his contemporaries. The expressionist prints were both whimsical and grotesque, and pointed to the growth of new art in post-war France, along with his personal experiences living as an artist in Paris, a nexus of creativity and one of the capitals of modern art at the time. This exhibit, along with another exhibit held on the same year, heralded Sansó's "black period" which is characterized by dark colors and a melancholic mood, etched his name in Philippine art history.
As a fine art, reknowned artists from over five centuries like Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, and many others, pushed printmaking to its limits and enabled even greater public acceptance. In the Philippines, Manuel Rodriguez Sr., Pandy Aviado, Ofelia Gelvezon-Tequi, and national artists Arturo Luz, Cesar Legaspi, Jose Joya Jr., and Benedicto Cabrera are among the main proponents of the art of the print.
The exhibition Etched in History: Sansó and the Art of the Print opens on July 1, 2015 to the public with public programs in cooperation with the Printmakers Association of the Philippines and Mr. Pandy Aviado. For inquiries please call 952 1568, text 0998 572 3360 or email fundacionsanso@gmail.com.
Fundacion Sansó is a not-for-profit institution with a mandate to preserve and promote the artistic legacy of Juvenal Sansó, a Philippine-based artist with a stellar international career in the visual arts spanning almost 70 years, to date, and who has been meritoriously awarded the King's Cross of Isabela (Spain), the Order of Chevalier (France) and the Presidential Medal of Merit (Philippines). Fundacion Sansó manages and makes available to the public a collection of representative works by the artist, his personal archive, and his library of books and other publication formats collected by the him personally, and those written about him in Museo Sansó. It is open to the public Mondays to Saturdays, 10am to 5pm.