Provenance: Private Collection, Makati City

ABOUT THE WORK

Through decades of tireless creativity, Juvenal Sanso has been able to fashion his own vision and version of the landscape (a classical genre), which has already achieved canonical status. His every landscape is unmistakable for its haunting expanse, layers-upon-layers of rocks that divide and sub-divide the space, and a vaulting sky (which, in his later works, is punctuated by the sphere of the moon). This particular work shares the best qualities of his landscape paintings, chiefly a surreal feel, as though it is still in the process of emerging from the imagination. The blue of sky, interrupted only by wisps of clouds, is rich and stark, recalling the cerulean of the Mediterranean or the tropics. The whole scene magnetizes the viewer’s gaze, drawing it further in to this dreamy, deliciously ambiguous realm that only Juvenal Sanso can conceive.