Finally the artist with a fiery spiritual vision gets a retrospective at the CCP
Among the hundreds of large, medium to small oil paintings, and some charcoal pieces and drawings by this painter over the past half century, the 94 on show in the ongoing “Revelations: A Jaime de Guzman Retrospective” at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) is a modest number.
But brilliant choices, both deliberate and serendipitous, make a stunning summary of a proudly “indio” artist’s seminal role in the vision, practice and history of Philippine art. Not sure if the younger generation of art lovers caught the deep sense of homecoming that we, his contemporaries in the arts community, felt on Jaime’s big night.
It was palpable nevertheless, starting by strolling down Pasilyo Juan Luna with its gently lit blue-and-green scenes from sacred Mt. Banahaw and Sagada, the shangri-la of our youth. Startling to me on memory lane was “Mang-kek”—Kankanaey for Sagada’s immemorial bird-catching with triangular nets lookalikes of the sails of the lowland fishing raft, the salambao. Swirling mist under the birdcatchers’ feet perched on mountain cliffs looked for all the world like seawaves, an otherworldly trompe l’oeil the eye was free to see as either seascape or mountainscape.
Center in this line of gentle landscape odes to our mountain retreats, Jaime’s latest work down Pasilyo Juan Luna, is the impeccably symbolic “Labyrinthian Way”—a giant maze, lotus in its heart, All-Seeing Eye looming overhead; left of the maze, a belltower with a hovering rainbow triangle, below, a tiny male figure in red “kundiman” pants walking down narrow stone steps; right of the maze are coconut trees and ferns in a rocky cliff face of Mt. Banahaw, with a tiny pinkish blur of a female figure.
Combining circle and spiral, the maze is an ancient symbol of wholeness, a journey to the center of self and back again into the world. Belltower, rainbow triangle and male figure are dense symbolism for “civilization”, built-up culture in the so-called left brain ruled by the animus (the male in kundiman pants); trees and rocky cliff face with an almost indiscernible female figure (anima), the right brain ruling intuition and flowing natural forces. To my mind, this painting is a “homegrown altar” at the foot of sacred Banahaw, with infinity resident in time and place, in its heart a blooming lotus of enlightenment.
Mythic, lyrical, epic
Mythic, lyrical, epic—sometimes all three—this was De Guzman all right. Unspoken in the evening’s flow of friends, ex-lovers, art lovers, aspirants, collectors were the years it took to arrive here. Striking was how CCP Chair Emily Altomonte-Abrera, Jaime’s close friend for five decades, curated for the very first time in her life. De Guzman “jammed” with her for the show’s concept; she conceived the flow, all realized with her highly competent visual arts coordinator Boots Herrera, to whom fell the gargantuan task of classification.
There could have been no happier choice for guest curator than Abrera, a classic photo artist back for the nonce to her first love in the arts, rich with memories shared with Jaime, his wife and kids. No wonder they instantly arrived at, a perfect name for this retrospective, “Revelations.”
Love and memory flowing from Pasilyo to Bulwagang Juan Luna in the alchemy of shared vision, Jaime’s four giant murals—“Gomburza” and “Metamorphosis” I, II and III silently exploded in the first exhibit room.
A giant bird-headed humanoid emerges from a white field in reds, browns and ochre in “Metamorphosis” I. In “Metamorphosis” II, the field of white recedes in swirling olive green and sky blue in red orange haze, the bird’s head transforming into a fleshless human skull, white eagle close to his right hand.
The humanoid of “Metamorphosis” III has a full bird’s head, now kneeling with knees wide apart, giant arms stretched out as though crucified, its hands ending in talons in sombre blacks, dark reds and blues directly contrasting with the white of “Metamorphosis” 1.
This epic series, hanging in the dark CCP third-floor hallway for decades, always struck me as a parable of historic Filipino struggle for identity from forgotten chthonic depths, powers of flight breaking free in agony.
“Gomburza” is dated 1970—three years before the centennial of the martyrdom of three priests who agitated for the nationalization of the Spaniard-dominated clergy. More dark colors in Jaime’s bold expressionist strokes recapture that spark that eventually led to the conflagration of the Philippine Revolution, but artworks need care.
“I noticed a network of cracks” in these murals, art restorer June Dalisay confided. And so, “because I love and believe in the creative genius of Jaime, I offered to work on them gratis et amore.” She was rewarded by a moving experience.
Hidden energy
“There was hidden energy in every mural,” she recalled. “I was in awe every time I would look from a distance to check the work of my team. The images were very powerful and deep, one is transfixed and gripped at the throat. Iba ang timpla at hagod ni Jaime.”
“Metamorphosis” and “Gomburza,” back to their original radiance and darkness as though seen for the first time, backdropped De Guzman that evening. “I feel I’ve come full circle,” he quietly told a TV reporter March 4, full moon evening of what also happened to be his 73rd birthday.
These murals that first turned De Guzman into a cult figure were back at CCP, on the same exhibition hall where “Metamorphosis” was were first exhibited in 1970. The occasion was the very first Thirteen Artists Awards exhibit, honoring De Guzman among the year’s best young artists, all famous names today. Memory yields images of Jaime’s canvases as the boldest that CCP evening 45 years ago.
Whispers of a major young artist’s apocalyptic visions in expressionist strokes shading into surreal surrounded both his large and small exhibits in the years immediately before and after.
His first one-man show at Solidaridad Galleries in 1967 had lyrical, only slightly distorted lines in landscapes from his first painting sojourn in Cebu, Samar and Zamboanga as an art student. That same year, in another one-man show, the National Museum exhibited its newly acquired “Night Bird” with its burst of flaming scarlet, secretly titled “Ibong Adarna” by Jaime. In 1968 came his second one-man show at Luz Gallery with walls large enough for his huger explosions. In 1970, the CCP Small Gallery opened with another face of De Guzman’s art in drawings on paper.
Through his explorations of style and medium, keen-eyed art collector Leandro V. Locsin, steeped in history, recognized a high point in “Gomburza,” antedating a movement of social realist painters who would soon out-vision Marcos’s martial law. The future National Artist for Architecture quickly bought “Gomburza” and donated it to the CCP back in 1970. I suspect it was Lindy, too, who tipped off Imelda Marcos to acquire “Metamorphosis” for the CCP. With buzz growing louder in that ironically pyrotechnic season for Philippine art, De Guzman participated in the Frankfurt Art International in Germany, the eye of the gods was upon him.
In 1971, the National Historical Commission next sent him on a grant to Mexico to learn more from their triad of muralists of revolution—Diego de Rivera, Clemente Orozco, David A. Siqueiros. Whoever was directly responsible for sending De Guzman to Mexico must have had a subversive thought or two.
He had, after all, been raised by his Katipunero grandfather Fausto de Guzman in their ancestral home in Liliw, Laguna. Lolo Fausto, a notary public, who composed rondalla music and translated Spanish poetry into Tagalog, inevitably joined the Katipunan, seeing action at the turn of the century.
By the 1960s, young De Guzman cut a dashing figure but not quite the kind for communist armed struggle, all the rage at the time. Instead he chose another radical path we, his close friends, called “raising consciousness” aided by both meditation and consciousness-
raising drugs like marijuana (today a recognized cure for ailments physical and spiritual). In any case, marijuana brought our indio’s Mexican sojourn to an unceremonious end.
De Guzman came home sooner than expected, skipping news of his deportation but brimming with delicious stories under his gaucho hat. Now arm in arm with lovely Ann Polkinghorn, the love of his life—a fine painter and ceramicist herself, the only thing missing was Liliw Boy dancing the zapateado, shouting, “Ole!”
Banahaw and family
Back in Mexico, De Guzman had promised Ann to “take you home and give you children at the foot of our sacred mountain.” He more than kept that promise with six beautiful children in precisely those Banahaw foothills, interrupted by an extended sojourn in kindred mountains of Sagada, Mt. Province. Surrounded by reddish brown potter’s clay, Ann and De Guzman created ceramic art together, raised their six (soon seven) children, while stealing moments from two high-fired kilns “cooking” exquisite pottery, to write lines like these in radiant mountain light:
The creative person does not stop
When there are no walls to unwall.
There is always something to do.
Wedge the day, invent a little.
It is good for the mind
To feel the earth, to water it,
to form it
And be formed.
There is the fire
In the night’s harmony
With the stars
In the day as bright as the sun.
In a pot
In a jewel
from the fire.
This divine fire Young Man caught when he first saw “Metamorphosis” in that dark CCP hallway. Fascinated with truth, power and beauty in old, forgotten things since childhood, he set out in his late 20s, looking for more of De Guzman’s work, finding and buying the portrait “Man” from Lepanto from a friend in 2007.
One evening in 2013, at CCP, Young Man finally met De Guzman himself. Finding him “aloof,” he nevertheless invited himself to the artist’s studio-residence in Candelaria. There he broached the idea of a retrospective. “Tinadhana”—fated —De Guzman now recalls of his encounter with “starstruck” (self-description) Young Man who, by then, had already compiled quite a list of collectors willing to lend their De Guzmans for a public exhibition.
And so it happened in 2014. Young Man’s passion and hard work brought about a De Guzman mini-retrospective in Art Fair Manila. De Guzman delightedly texted Abrera, inviting her to meet Young Man. A veteran of life’s surprises, Abrera found Young Man ready with his long list of lenders to add to her own formidable list of friends, personal and professional, who owned De Guzmans.
To everyone’s delight, the CCP’s Visual Arts coordinator, Boots Herrera had also put her Major in Art History to good use, with her thesis for an MA Philippine Studies on the subject of government support for the Arts, focused on the collections of the CCP Museum and Museum of Philippine Art.
The first artist Boots interviewed on the CCP collection was Roberto Chabet—not only an avant garde artist in his own right, but a gentle, generous soul who was the CCP’s Visual Arts Coordinator. Chabet never betrayed the difficult irony he would soon live with day by day under Marcos, prodding the Filipino arts community to healthy evolution arts under dictatorship.
First batch
Chabet’s was the transcendent eye that saw Jaime’s giftedness with the rest of the first Thirteen Artists when he began that institution at the eve of martial law—naming Albano, Antonio, Aviado, Castrillo, BenCab, Emsucado, Galang, Hechanova, Manalo, Maramag, and Rodriguez Jr. In 2013, two years before his death, from Chabet’s dear departed mouth came word to Herrera that it was time for De Guzman’s retrospective.
By then, De Guzmans had become “part of the furniture” of our generation’s visual memories of a gifted nation, where painting was the very first “art” we knew in Juan Luna’s time. How apropos, that spaces named after him should slowly fill up with the work of De Guzman in our new century.
In “Revelations” are decade after decade of artistic spiritual journeying through landscapes on canvas, slowly transforming into inner states of contemplation in the ’60s, bursting into bold statements of historical struggle through the ’70s, pausing for charming portraits of art lovers every once in a while (leaving a record of charcoal exploration in Zen-like strokes), going deeper into secret sorceries in the Philippine countryside (like “Pakulba,” a stunning portrait of a shaman igniting firefly stars in his blue aura), deeper and deeper into revelation at the foot of sacred Banahaw—vulcan de agua, volcano of water crystalline, pure and healing.
There, where De Guzman lives alone today, where he raised children with his equally magical wife, live memories of our people escaping colonial Christian tyranny, returning to an ancient animist soul. De Guzman’s strokes have become leaner, simpler, more spare, more direct through the years, yet with the same power that first began recording what El Indio saw and continues to see in the fire of Bathala’s All-Seeing Eye.
