Provenance: Antonio Cruz Kayanan was born in Victoria, Tarlac, in the province of Pampanga, in June 1911, the oldest of 14 born to a country doctor. He graduated from the University of the Philippines and Santo Tomas with degrees in civil engineering and architecture. In the early 1930's he worked at a number of jobs to support the family (his father died when he was 19), and one of them was an editorial illustrator/cartoonist at one of the Manila newspapers. It was during this time he became involved with artists who were his contemporaries. He left the Philippines in 1940 to get his masters in City Planning at MIT, graduating in 1942. After the war, he went back to Manila as the lead architect and city planner of Quezon City, and after marrying his wife, a Finn he met in Boston, he began working for the United Nations and was involved in urban planning in Puerto Rico. It was during the Marcos administration that Antonio Kayanan came back to serve the country and was appointed by President Marcos as the Chairman of the Task Force on Human Settlements. He renewed his friendships with his ‘compadres’ Galo Ocampo and Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco who were both also involved with projects of then First Lady Imelda Marcos.

ABOUT THE WORK

From the beginning of his career in the 1940s to the end in 1969, Carlos Botong Francisco never ceased to part from his bond with the Angono earth. This work is a study of Carlos Botong Francisco’s 1969 “The Camote Eaters.” The gritty resolve behind depicting bent backs and scrawny arms working on the soil still reveals Botong’s grace of untutored ease. It is typical of Botong’s final works in which his rendering of natural appearances is far from his early linear paintings where lines and human contours appear like cutouts, and gave way to a kind of Expressionism all his own. Carlos V Francisco’s 1946 take on the Camote Eaters (Cecilia Y Locsin Collection), along with Fernando Amorsolo’s Burning of Manila (1942, CCP Collection), and Demetrio Diego’s Capas (1948, National Museum Collection), are among the Filipino paintings that emerged during the Japanese Occupation that symbolized the creative fervor that transpired in spite of foreign rule. The Angono everyman of Botong’s time is carried to the fields in infancy. His first memories are of his parents or grandparents, his elder brothers and sisters working the soil. The bond with the soil is a strong one. “The Camote Eaters” is one of a select few paintings of Botong which might identify him as an early social realist who portrays the grit and inner resolve of the humble people, but the artist never entertained dark social issues in his art. It is just that in the art of Botong the earth has always had a mystical quality. In 1957, writer Juan Y Gatbonton described Angono (the hometown of Carlos Botong Francisco) as: “The road cuts at the base of the low hills, which are softly rippling and grown with small trees and weeds, save where bold brown patches, kaingin (slash and burn farm lots) had been gouged (sic) on their sides by hardy hill farmers. National Artist Carlos “Botong” Francisco left teaching at the University of Santo Tomas in 1948 to paint full time in his hometown, to renew his bond with the earth of Angono. Botong pursued the goal of capturing the earthy Filipino character in painting and responding to the burning issue of the late 1940s to 1950s: What is Philippine Art? Like his hero Paul Gauguin, he escaped the alienation of the Big City to find happiness in a simple way of life among the rustic folk; but unlike Gauguin he did not have to go to Tahiti to do this, but chose his very own hometown. Botong always advised those artists who looked up to him that they should never mix with the Manila Art Crowd. “What else do we need?” he asked. Everything they needed could be found in Angono. It has also been written that the Camote Eaters paintings may well be Botong’s homage to Vincent Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters (1885).