The Magnificent September Auction, which continues the 15th anniversary celebration this year of the prestigious Leon Gallery, will have as highlight Arturo Luz’s Sun and Sea, a work that carries historic significance in the career of the National Artist. The auction will be held Sept. 13, 2025, 2 pm, at Eurovilla 1, Rufino corner Legazpi Streets, Legazpi Village, Makati.
Arturo Luz’s Sun and Sea was part of a joint exhibition by Luz and Cenon Rivera, held from July to August 1962 at the then-two-year-old Luz Gallery. The show was a farewell exhibit of the two artists, who were recipients of a one-year scholarship grant from the Italian government. The Luz-Rivera show was the first project sponsored by the then newly organized Philippine-Italian Association, whose aims included the promotion and implementation of the cultural projects of the Italian Embassy in the Philippines.
Luz’s Italian grant entitled him to a full year in Rome to pursue graduate studies in painting and the graphic arts. Before proceeding to Italy, Luz had to go to the US in mid-August 1962, for a four-month observation tour of American museums and galleries, sponsored by the US State Department’s Educational and Cultural Exchange Program.
In the US, Luz observed recent developments in American art, intending to study exhibition techniques and effective gallery management under prominent American gallerists, which he could apply in his own Luz Gallery. At that time, the Luz Gallery had already succeeded the Philippine Art Gallery (PAG) as the country’s sole professionally run gallery. Luz also visited the studios and workshops of leading American painters and printmakers.
By the time Luz and Rivera were awarded their grants, two other Filipino artists were already in their third year of studies in Rome: Leon Pacunayen and Leonardo Hidalgo. Their grants were extended due to their excellent standings at the Accademia di Belle Arti. Another artist, Florencio B. Concepcion, had already spent one year in the city.
Luz was approached by the Philippine-Italian Association for a joint exhibit celebrating his study grant and that of Rivera. The Association reportedly requested Luz to produce more than a dozen paintings and drawings in 20 days; a startled Luz initially hesitated.
Nati Valentin, Luz’s then fiancée, reported in her All about art column in The Manila Times (20 July 1962): “This is what Arturo Luz exclaimed when approached by the Philippine-Italian Association for a joint exhibit: ‘What? Paint an exhibition in 20 days? Impossible! A single painting takes weeks!’ But that is exactly what Luz has done. He has painted 20 paintings in as many days and finished some 30 new drawings! How did he disprove his own words? By momentum. Luz has been drawing like mad for the past three months…His one-painting-per-day feat proves that art is also largely discipline.”
‘Sun and Sea,’ as featured in Leonidas Benesa’s review of Luz’s works at the Luz-Rivera joint exhibition at the Luz Gallery, Philippines Herald newspaper, 4 August 1962 (Photo courtesy of Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation Archives)
In Sun and Sea, Luz portrays a panoramic view of a seascape. At first glance, one might think of the scenery as nighttime, evident in Luz’s use of black enamel paint.
The sun’s rays are rendered eccentrically, outlined in stark lines that are both playful and rigid. The sea waves are injected on the canvas in agitated flicks of bronze enamel similar to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings and Fernando Zóbel’s Saetas. Colors are in full-on contrast with the subject matter. Luz instead uses a black and bronze color palette, with his lines acting as the principal actor in the painting (color becomes merely a backup). The result is a frenzy of motion, suggesting a bustling seascape teeming with marine escapades and coastal excursions. Luz also alludes to the Japanese concept of shibui, centering on the subtle and the silent.
Luz once said in his 1956 book of drawings that his figures of acrobats, musicians, and carnival forms are an “attempt to communicate in graphic terms the color, sound, and gaiety of celebration.” The same can be said of Sun and Sea, in which linear energies and configurations speak more than the color itself—a mischievous coldness bordering on dry-wit humor and a graphic orderliness that is Luz’s trademark.
An article in the 30 July 1962 issue of The Manila Times tackling the joint exhibition of Luz and Rivera noted about Luz’s works: “Paradoxically, the principal theme of the new Luz drawings and paintings is celebration and gaiety, an effect achieved through drawing and composition, rather than the use of brilliant coloring. Effects are created through lightness of handling rather than the heavy-handed use of contrasts and intensities.”
The Magnificent September Auction is on Sept. 13, 2025, 2 pm, at Eurovilla 1, Rufino corner Legazpi Streets, Legazpi Village, Makati City. Preview week is from Sept. 6 to 12, 2025, 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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