The watershed works of modernist masters José Joya and Mauro Malang Santos are among the most coveted gems up for grabs at León Gallery’s highly anticipated year-closer, The Kingly Treasures Auction 2025, taking place on Saturday, December 6, at 2 pm.
José Joya in the late 1960s. Source: Facebook National Artist for Visual Arts 2003 José T. Joya
Both created at the tail end of the 1960s, Joya’s and Malang’s works signaled the birth of the second generation of the Philippines’ modernism movement. Carrying the legacy of the first generation, these works introduced the radical evolution of the movement and revitalized the art scene.
Created during his second “New York Period,” Joya’s 1968 Pisces is almost an anachronism in its own right. By then, he had fully shed the abstract expressionist spirit with which he had unequivocally embraced just 10 years earlier. In its place was geometric expressionism, which favored circles and grids that evoked the zeitgeist of America in the late 1960s.
“While in New York, Joya abandoned his now familiar abstract expressionist style in favor of a monochromatic, incised, and linear vocabulary inspired by prehistoric graffiti
found in Philippine iron-age pottery,” said a December 3, 1970 article from The Manila Chronicle.
Joya’s venture into geometric expressionism is a result of both an inner reawakening of his native Filipino sensibilities and his oriental inspirations. More than the blockbuster popularity of the pop art movement in New York, Joya’s Pisces veered more into the oriental concept of mandala, symbolizing the universe and its cyclical nature.
Mauro Malang Santos (1928-2017), Mother and Child, signed and dated 1967 (lower right), acrylic on canvas, 17 ¼” x 33 ¾” (44 cm x 91 cm)
By the 1960s, despite his presence in New York, Joya had successfully eschewed his Western-influenced abstraction in favor of a more pronounced Filipino identity in his works. He was self-professed in his fascination with Philippine history, digging into rare sources in his pursuit of inspiration. Around this time, Filipino historians Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino’s nationalist historiography aimed at decolonizing Philippine history.
In particular, Joya’s fascination with pre-Hispanic Philippine visual symbols was noted, with the 1964 excavation at Lipuun Point, Palawan, resulting in an archaeological breakthrough. The Manunggul Jar, hailed as a magnum opus of Philippine pre-colonial history, represents the soul’s entry into the afterlife and emphasizes the importance of water in our ancestors’ beliefs about life and death.
The designs marking these ancient relics so moved Joya that he began incorporating and referencing the jar’s curvilinear designs into his works, particularly in Virgo.
Joya’s Manunggul Vessel, featured on the cover of the Philippine Quarterly (December 1971), showed similarities with Pisces.
On the other hand, Malang’s 1967 Mother and Child is part of his hallmark second solo exhibition, where he made the transition from being a cartoonist to being a full-time artist.
“Actually, I’m a late starter. I started doing serious painting only in 1967, when I had a one-man show at the Luz Gallery,” he said in an interview with artist and art critic Cid Reyes. “My first one-man show was at the Philippine Art Gallery, but those were semi-cartoons. For me, that show served as a transition between cartooning and serious painting.”
This exhibition, already sold out on the opening night, launched Malang’s career as we know it today—though he already was established as a cartoonist, his role as a Filipino artist grew from here.
This Mother and Child were nestled at the bottom right corner of the rectangular, landscape canvas; the majority of the canvas, meanwhile, is a maze-like depiction of the city slums and the stacked wooden houses tittering precariously over each other. In fact, the work warrants a second look to notice the titular characters.
Very much a Malang work, Mother and Child features not just its main characters but also the situation they live through. The vastness with which the pair is nestled creates the ambiance of a tightly knit community, something that is abundant in the country, the slums they live in enveloping rather than loom over the pair.
Just like many of his works, the central figures of his paintings do not exist within a vacuum—they operate within the environs of their own community, a well-oiled machine. Amidst the busy city, Malang emphasizes the woman, her paramount role in societal development palpable even from a distance.
These works, featuring the maturation of several artists well-loved today, portray not just the growth of Malang and Joya but also that of the Philippines’ modernist movement. From its beginnings with its pioneer Victorio Edades and the Thirteen Moderns, these artists carry the legacy of the first generation, creating a counterculture that survives to this day.
The Kingly Treasures Auction is happening on Saturday, December 6, 2 pm at Eurovilla 1, Rufino Corner Legazpi Streets, Legazpi Village, Makati City. Preview week runs from November 29 to December 5, from 9 am to 7 pm. For further inquiries, email info@leon-gallery.com or contact +632 8856-27-81. To browse the catalog, visit www.leon-gallery.com.
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