So Spreads the Light
signed (lower right)
ca. 1970s
acrylic on canvas
37" x 55 1/4" (94 cm x 140 cm)

Accompanied by a certificate issued by Fundacion Sansó confirming the authenticity of this lot

PROPERTY OF A VERY DISTINGUISHED FAMILY


An Ode to a Lifelong Friend: Sanso’s Dazzling Encounters With Brittany, FranceWater has been a constant source of fascination for Juvenal Sanso. One of his first encounters with water was the long boat trip his family took from Barcelona to Manila. For forty days and forty nights, the young Sanso encountered the great vastness of the ocean, seemingly infinite as he peers into the horizon. From the Mediterranean to the Red Sea to the Suez Canal they went on, their steamship passing through a myriad of places he never could have imagined. But his first real encounter with the water, the one where it truly became his muse, was in Brittany, France. He returned to its coastline for twenty-two years, drawn by its beauty and its waters and welcomed warmly by lifelong friends, the primary of whom are the Rouault – le Dantec family. Sanso attributes his introduction to Brittany to Yves le Dantec. Founder, manager, and chief editor of Ouest-France (France’s biggest newspaper at the time), Sanso met Yves in 1958. To his surprise, the man was married to Agnes Rouault, the daughter of the great French artist and a master he idolized, Georges Rouault. This chance meeting led to a lifelong friendship with the family, a relationship close enough that Sanso considers Yves as a “second father.” “Until now, I am amazed with the thought that this family practically adopted me,” he wrote in 2007. “They were generous enough to help me discover the most ravishing corners of Brittany's northern coast.”Created around the 1970s, more than a decade after meeting the le Dantec (and subsequently, Brittany), So Spreads the Light shows off the coastal town’s breathtaking terrains. With a side of its coastline facing the Atlantic Ocean, the harsh wind and waves over time caused magnificent rock formations to form. Sanso bathes the glorious landscape in the lively afternoon sunlight, washing the cliffside green and turning the already vibrant sky into a brighter shade of blue. “It took me about two years of just staring at the seas and the changing tides and the rose granite rocks,” Sanso said. “I simply could not paint. This landscape was so beautiful that I must have felt like I did not deserve it. I had no language to express it yet.” “If the friendship had faltered then or simply ceased, I would never have developed an inner path,” he continued. Sanso’s relationship with the le Dantecs surpassed that of close friendship. “I was one of the family,” he said. “The proof of the pudding was really in accepting all the problems I brought along with my painting.” More than anything, So Spreads the Light is as much of Sanso’s love letter to Brittany as it is an ode to his intimate bond with the Rouault–le Dantec family. So intertwined was Brittany and the le Dantecs that when Yves passed away in 1982, Sanso had not returned to Brittany ever since. (Hannah Valiente)