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About the Subject Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco is often compared to Diego Rivera, the Mexican painter he, too, admired — and for good reason. Botong created massive murals as well as created an archetypal Filipino character, mythic as “Malakas” and as heroic as Bonifacio and Rizal, and molded in their images. As the clay for these statues, he relied on the cast of characters of his beloved hometown Angono. He would paint tillers of the soil, even camote-diggers; fishermen pulling at their nets (in the “Mampupukot”); also families gathering around their favorite meal (in the fishing-town of Angono, that would be none other than “sinigang”, the painting of which resides in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas collection) as well as the making of Christmas rice-cakes of puto bumbong. The Fiesta of Angono was a central event in the town’s life, as well as in Botong’s. And as Salvador Juban, his long-time protegé and artist assistant, would recall, Botong always painted from life and the things he knew. The Fiesta ritual consisted of a parade carrying the sacred image of San Clemente to the lake’s banks at the edge of the town, under a bamboo arch and accompanied by uniformed devotees and a brass band. That would be none other than the famous Banda Uno put together by Angono’s other favorite son, musician Lucio San Pedro — Botong’s cousin. (Angono is the home of not just one but two national artists, Botong being one for the arts and San Pedro, the other for music) Higantes, or giant papier-mâché statues, were also introduced in the 1950s, although Juban says they started off only as a pair and were not the horde they are today. San Clemente (the Pope St. Clement) would be hoisted reverentially into a “pagoda” tower, itself set on a bamboo platform on a row of bankas (boats), propelled by the fishermen of Angono with long sticks across the lake to the other side of town, from where it would make its way back to the church. (San Clemente is the patron saint of fishermen, having suffered a watery fate at the hands of the Roman emperor Trajan who cast him into the Mediterranean for his faith, his feet weighed down with an anchor.) Juban remembers that Botong would be an avid participant of the fiesta, following the saint to the lakeshore and on its long procession. At one time, he was even “presidente de festejos”, in charge of the festivities. During one fateful fiesta, the pagoda sank from the weight of the devotees and Botong led the townsfolk in raising money to build five large boats to carry the pagoda the next year. The overweighed pagoda appears to be the subject of a watercolor in the collection of the De La Salle University Museum, (see inset on next page.) Botong adds an interesting sidebar by focusing on the distracting charms of an Angono lass in the foreground, hinting that the travails of the men struggling on the raft, are nothing compared to her smile. This attention to the microcosm would appear deliberately and often in his many works. Botong would invite various celebrities to the fiesta, and his guests would include the movie actor Mario Montenegro and director Manuel Conde. He recalls how Alejandro “Anding” Roces and many other writers would perch on a roof of a house to take photographs of the proceedings. Botong would go on to create various masterpieces about the Angono fiesta: The “Fiesta” (1946), an important oil leading to his final work, the “Pista sa Nayon” (1947), which now hangs in Malacanan; and the “Fluvial Parade” (1961), which is in the collection of the Far Eastern University. The “Fluvial Parade”, 1961 (inset above) is a magnificent spectacle of the Angono Fiesta, featuring San Clemente under a bamboo arch on a raft that travels down the water, seemingly sent off by a large golden hot-air paper balloon, (another floats away in the distance.) There is the Banda Uno with a majorette, presumably Botong’s recurring nod to the master Lucio San Pedro. There are fisherfolk, peering behind a row of paddles. A fisherman at the top right holds the silver-y kanduli fish (otherwise know as the Manila Bay catfish and not to be mistaken for the black hito) aloft, ready to find its destination in the favorite dish of the sons of Angono, the delicious sinigang na kanduli sa miso, which is being stewed intently in an oversized kawa (cauldron) by the couple in the foreground. There is a table of diners, another recurring theme in Botong’s fiesta paintings, of the “panigang” — which is the time-honored way in Angono to enjoy sinigang, laid out on banana leaves with mounds of rice, “in all its soupy and sour glory.” (Think boodle fight but with more focus.) — by Lisa Guerrero Nakpil. About the Painting Salvador “Badong” Juban, Botong’s last protege and artist assistant, says that he recalls Botong working on this particular painting, “Pista ng Angono” in the master’s sala or living room. (He joined Botong in 1959; this painting is dated 1960.) It is Juban who gives the first clue to the origins and the meaning of this painting, pointing out the similarities between the couple cooking up the sinigang in the “Fluvial Parade” (1961) and the more prominent pair in this work, dated 1960. Pointing to the profile and finely-shaded jaw of the male cook, he exclaimed that “only Botong could have produced such fineness of work.” In this “Pista ng Angono”, the larger-than-life features of the other works — the saint and its arch, the brass band and higantes, the golden balloons, and yes, the heaving crowds — all recede into the distance. So also do the larger homes of the richer and more famous, filled with prosperous merrymakers. One spies a single purple-toned higante beside the thatch-roofed stage for the town zarzuela. The Banda Uno leads the return of the saint, symbolized by the bamboo arch. Instead of a large hot-air balloon, now just bunches of much smaller, multi-colored ones flutter in the wind. But that is not to say that the images have been less carefully drawn: In Ino M. Manalo’s essay “Angono: Hometown as Subversion”, in the landmark book, “The Life & Art of Botong Francisco”, he zeroes in on Botong’s mastery of “the technique of the tiny”, or the use of “minutiae”, the smallest details to put forward the idea that nothing is unimportant. The patchwork, galvanized-iron roof of the church, the delicately colored white veils of the ladies streaming out of the church; even the portraits of the diners at the panigang are lovingly limned. (One gentleman has sideburns, a lady’s dangling earring is painstakingly outlined.) The church of Angono is a solemn, towering if pale presence in the near distance. If the “Fluvial Parade” features the fiesta’s principal players in the theater of town life, Botong now chooses to focus on the backstage, behind-the-scenes characters in this “Pista ng Angono”. Here we see men and women, still toiling away even as the fiesta winds down. It is a private look at Botong’s neighbors and friends; showing his very real connection to the simple folk who keep the fiesta (and the town, for that matter) humming; a different take from the usual pomp and circumstance of the hermana mayor and her friends celebrating in the distance. A woman, half-hidden, sitting on the ground, pounds away at a mortar, the pestle in one hand; a man back turned, but pants pockets clearly drawn, tends to a lechon (roast pig); another character (reminiscent of the work, Puto Bumbong) is half-seen grinding a coconut. An almost-secretive, sly courtship takes place on the front porch of a house; a coy lass listens to a man on his guitar, while her father has his back turned, distracted by the fiesta goings-on. (Angono tradition has it that men who came a-wooing would be obliged to clean the home of their intended before the fiesta with the scratchy Angono leaf, isis.) The lead characters in this work are the cook and his helpmate, busy with the preparation of the various fiesta dishes. There are tin cups and tomatoes on a small table apart from various pots and pans. (Juban says the typical menu, apart from sinigang na kanduli, would be adobo, menudo, inihaw na dalag with the anise-like leaves of the alagaw.) The cook wears a hat, an apron, and a towel tied around his neck. To the right of this pair, is another important character, a young woman in the traditional alampay (scarf) worn over her head, that Botong loved to chronicle. She is tirelessly scrubbing away at a pile of pinggan (plates), rinsing them in a palanggana (basin) of water. She squats beneath a sinuous red tolda (half-tent), a device to create a familiar space found in the other fiesta paintings, held up by two gnarled trees. The figures are all Botong’s gentle reminders that the Philippines, as Ino M. Manalo has put it, is unmistakably “a country of people with individual lives that the audience is being challenged to understand.” These common folk go on undisturbed by the hubbub of the fiesta, engrossed in their own world, underlining Botong’s love for the ordinary men, the Juan de la Cruzes, his brothers, mates and co-conspirators in the town of Angono. For Botong, these men and women were the most important figures in his personal kaleidoscope of life. For Juban, the beauty of the unadorned country life was the most important theme of Botong’s works — making this only recently discovered gem a significant chapter in the master’s history. — by Lisa Guerrero Nakpil About Salvador Juban Salvador ‘Badong’ Juban officially joined the great Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco’s studio as an apprentice in 1959, winning an audience, he laughingly recalls, on the strength of his father being a captain in the local constabulary. The clincher was that Juban presented to Botong a bulging scrapbook of clippings of the artist’s works — and related how he had been fascinated by Botong, already a local legend, even as a child. Juban said that Botong was the simplest of men, whose studio was no more than a shack made up of rice sacks and thatch and Juban would watch through its open windows, entranced as the master worked late into the night. Juban even persuaded his mother, the town washerwoman to allow About the Artist Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco was born on November 4, 1912; was raised and lived in the ancient town of Angono, Rizal. He fell short by one year of completing his course in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines, preferring to work instead in the Philippines Herald as an illustrator. There, he would meet the other artists who would become the legendary Thirteen Moderns, Vicente Manansala, Cesar Legaspi and Hernando Ocampo. His classmates would eventually also join that august roster: Galo Ocampo, Diosdado Lorenzo and Ricarte Purugganan. He would go on to win numerous awards and win the love of a grateful nation, for his paintings that captured the Filipino soul. Botong would be named Philippine National Artist for Painting, posthumously, in 1973. — by Lisa Guerrero Nakpil him to deliver the laundry to Botong’s two maiden aunts who raised him. (He said his mother would often object because he would be gone for hours, as he would take the opportunity to observe Botong even more closely.) Juban was first assigned to transfer Botong’s sketches for woodcarvings (his wife was from the Philippine woodworking capital, Paete, and instigated the use of this medium.) It was years before he was allowed to actually take paint to canvas, and Juban says he was first allowed to use only the pigments left over from the famous Philippine International Fair murals, almost a decade before. He assisted Botong on a number of commissions, including the masterpieces at Manila City Hall, Manila Banking Corporation, Don Bosco and for various leading Filipino and multinational organizations. Juban said that as a result, he became an expert in forming curls of smoke and clouds (‘usok at ulap.’) Badong Juban worked as Botong’s “protege” from 1959 to 1962, when he took a short break to work on props and backdrops for Premiere films; returning in 1965 as a full-fledged artist’s assistant until the day of Botong’s death in 1969, but he remained a household fixture for about a decade, sleeping on a banig (straw mat) in the studio. — by Lisa Guerrero Nakpil About the Artist Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco was born on November 4, 1912; was raised and lived in the ancient town of Angono, Rizal. He fell short by one year of completing his course in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines, preferring to work instead in the Philippines Herald as an illustrator. There, he would meet the other artists who would become the legendary Thirteen Moderns, Vicente Manansala, Cesar Legaspi and Hernando Ocampo. His classmates would eventually also join that august roster: Galo Ocampo, Diosdado Lorenzo and Ricarte Purugganan. He would go on to win numerous awards and win the love of a grateful nation, for his paintings that captured the Filipino soul. Botong would be named Philippine National Artist for Painting, posthumously, in 1973. — by Lisa Guerrero Nakpil