PROPERTY FROM THE CARLOS P. ROMULO COLLECTION

Accompanied by a certificate issued by Fundacion Sansó confirming the authenticity of this lot

Exhibited: Exhibited: Museum of Philippine Art, A Hymn to Water, Metro Manila, 1968.

ABOUT THE WORK

In this alluring Juvenal Sansó piece, a turreted dark, massive structure rises in the distant horizon amidst an atmospheric landscape that seems as incandescent as the imagined surface of an otherworldly planet. Light in Sansó’s art is suffused with the moist feel and texture and hues of earth — an array of after rain purples, smoky grays rust browns. But gratefully, there is nothing drab about Sansó’s orchestration of less than brilliant hues and tones, just as there is no discernable shelter in his massed images. The appeal of this work by Sansó lies in the juxtaposition of inorganic and organic, liquid and solid, mobile and stationary, each accentuating the other as Leonardo also used light and shade dichotomies. Sansó’s themes evolved from temperate Brittany seascapes and landscapes to the piles of stone walls amid the tropical flora in Montalban, to fantastical and otherworldly landscapes as seen in this piece. Time and again he painted a series of similar works at this time which are devoid of human interest. Juvenal Sansó painted with a brush of a Realist, but with a mind of a Contemporary artist, creating his own dimension between surrealism and romanticism. His insipid subjects transformed into his very own world of poetry.