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

Provenance:
Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

Upon his return to the Philippines in 1957 from his European sojourn, Juvenal Sansó was pervaded with nostalgia, for various scenes from his blissful boyhood welcomed him once again. The diverse sceneries in the fishing village of San Dionisio, Parañaque, specifically the baklad or fish traps used by small fishermen, fluttered him towards romanticism in his paintings. The Baklad Series belongs to Sansó’s “nostalgic Philippine themes” (as classified by Alfredo Roces), which overlapped with his “grotesque period.” During his solo exhibit at the Luz Gallery in 1961, the barong-barong, the baklad, and the fishing boats emerged as the most prominent, encapsulating the dominant themes of this period in Sansó’s art. Since then, Sansó’s penchant for poetic surrealism that was once apparent, especially in his Brittany Series, was slowly bridled. In his appreciation of Sansó’s Baklad series, ParisienLiberé’s art critic Frank Elgar wrote: “Sansó loves very particularly to evoke river banks and shores with fish traps constructed in bamboo. These tall constructions become, under his brush, fabulous and majestic architectures like cathedrals profiled in an opalescent light of sunrise or sunset.” The Baklad, together with the Barung-barong series, have become two of the most exemplary and easily discernible paragons of the Filipino world.