PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF A DISTINGUISHED FAMILY
Unreined Growth
signed (lower right) ca. 1970s
acrylic on canvas
28 1/2" x 21 1/4" (72 cm x 54 cm)

Accompanied by a certificate issued by Fundacion Sansóconfirming the authenticity of this lot




WRITE UP:
The landscapes and still-life on Juvenal Sanso took an invigorating transformation in the 1970s. The previous decades saw Sanso’s “Black Period,” where his oeuvre teems with twisted features and grotesque sceneries borne out of his harrowing experiences during the Second World War as well as the alienation he experienced growing up as a visible foreigner in the Philippines.However, while working with his friend and mentor Edouard Georg, Georg told Sanso: “Why don’t you do me a flower instead of this head? I would like to see you do a flower.” The suggestion couldn’t have come at a better time – the 1960s and 1970s were a period of travel for Sanso. He spent this time in Paris, Brittany, and the Philippines where he encountered vastly different landscapes. In the face of the constant and varying changes in his environment, Sanso’s work slowly took on a tinge of romanticism, shedding the overt pessimism of his Black Period pieces.Unreined Growth (ca 1970s) was created at this decisive period of Sanso’s career. Bright and lively, the artist portrayed the vibrancy of the flora he encountered along his journeys. Perhaps it is the thriving plant life in Brittany or maybe a cluster of flora in the Philippines. Wherever it may be, Sanso depicts the beauty of nature in verdant greens and light yellows, a refreshing take on a commonplace theme.Sanso knows how to extract from nature a specific image to evoke a powerful reaction. “He is … poignant with rotting bushes and lichens,” writes Parisien-Liberé’s Frank Elgar. “When he interlaces leaves and flowers of imagination to form arborescent bouquets, impenetrable bushes, strange flora, like an obsession – all these are born from a poet’s heart.”Indeed, Juvenal Sanso is a poet of a painter, masterful in his craft and Unreined Growth is veritable proof of his lyricism and unique sentimentality. (Hannah Valiente)