Provenance: West Gallery

Exhibited: West Gallery, “Women Vendors”, Manila, 1995. Gallery 139, “Women”, Alabang Town Center, Muntinlupa Center, 1996.

ABOUT THE WORK

Starting as a successful cartoonist with his Kosme the Cop series on the Manila Chronicle in the 1950’s, and eventually becoming one of the towering figures of Philippine modern art, Mauro Malang Santos better known as “Malang” honed his ability of portraying the life and sounds of Philippine society in keeping with cubistic composition patterned after the art of Paul Klee, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso. That criticism cropped in an exchange of a conversation when interviewed by critic Cid Reyes in 1981 in Malang: Paintings and Drawings (Raya Books, 1981): “As I’ve said, I keep on ad-libbing. Marami ngang critcs ang naguguluhan sa gawa ko. They say I have an uncanny sense of design. Wala akong magagawa. That’s the system that works best for me. I [cannot] change just to make the critics happy. Kesyo “decorative”, kesyo walang “social significance”….My first responsibility as a painter is to paint myself. I paint for the pleasure of painting…”