Birth Anniversary of Mauro ‘Malang’ Santos
The #NationalMuseumPH celebrates the 94th birth anniversary of Mauro Malang Santos, who was born #OnThisDay in 1928, by featuring his painting “Panuelo” from the Philippine Center New York (PCNY) collection.
Signed “Malang, 22-10-73”, this oil painting is among the 115 out of the 120 works of art from the core collection of the PCNY. It is currently on exhibition at The Philippine Center New York (PCNY) Core Collection of 1974: A Homecoming Exhibition located in Galleries XXVII to XXVIII of the National Museum of Fine Arts (NMFA).
At the core of this artwork is a lean figure of a woman with an elongated neck and tiny feet. On the figure’s right shoulder hangs a pañuelo, painted in red, pink, and earth tones. A pañuelo is a square cloth worn to cover shoulders. The artist’s renowned subjects included female vendors, barung-barong (informal urban settlements), mother and child, churches, and everyday scenes.
Born in Santa Cruz, Manila, he used Malang as his artistic signature to honor his mother, who had it as her maiden name. He took drawing lessons under Teodoro Buenaventura (1863-1950) and studied at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts. He won awards in the annual art competitions of the Art Association of the Philippines, Society of Philippine Illustrators and Cartoonists, and the Art Directors Guild. In 1963, he was among the Ten Outstanding Young Men awardees and the Gawad CCP Para Sa Sining awardee in 1995. In 1981, the City of Manila conferred Malang with the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award for his significant contribution to Philippine Art.
The artist died in 2017. He was 89 years old.
The National Fine Arts Collection has several works of Malang namely: Mother and Child (1973, Gouache on canvas), Sampaguita Vendor (93/249) [Undated, Serigraph on paper], Yellow Plant (1983, Tempera on panel), Still Life (1985, Pastel on paper), and his gouache palette shot-glasses mounted on plywood.
You may view this painting and his other work, “Brown Head,” also from the collection of the PCNY by booking online through this website. For those who wish to #StayAtHome, you may click this link for the 360-virtual tour of the PCNY Homecoming Exhibition: https://www.nationalmuseum.gov.ph/pcny360/HTML5/pcny360.html
#MauroMalangSantos
Text and photo by NMP FAD
© National Museum of the Philippines (2022)
