‘Material Inspirations’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila
By Kiko del Rosario

Anita Magsaysay-Ho and Nena Saguil’s 1933 graduation portraits flanked by anecdotes by the artists. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

On a rare occasion for audiences in the Philippines, ‘Material Inspirations: Anita Magsaysay-Ho and Nena Saguil’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Manila introduced the forked psyches and motivations of the two artists. The exhibition took place concurrently with their participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale and gave full depictions of the labour and stimuli of their creative occupations. Both artists were born in 1914 in the Philippines and trained in the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts, where they earned certificates in painting in 1933. Curated by Patrick D. Flores, the exhibition did not push Magsaysay-Ho and Saguil to mirror or compete with each other, nor did it cocoon them in a Neo-Realist sorority. It allowed for their intellect, curiosity and determination to shine through independently, enabling them to hold on to the intellect, curiosity, and determination of their closest correlative and comparator in confidence.

The centre section of ‘Material Inspirations’. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

The bond that ‘Material Inspirations’ forges is contingent on tempera and ink, two kinds of media rarely chosen by Filipino artists. It may be said that they were singular in the mastery of the materials they chose. Magsasay-Ho learned egg tempera while studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and Saguil committed to ink pen and ink while studying abstract art at the Écoles d'art américaines de Fontainebleau in 1954. The media were carefully chosen by the respective artists for qualities relating to their individual sensitivities, for example, to luminosity, opalescence, and translucency, and to dots, lines, and punctuation.

Their material insights are evident in the pathways and openings carved out for the gallery. For example, a centre room shaped Magsaysay-Ho and Saguil’s coalition, which Flores kept open, and painted one part ochre and one part cobalt blue. These colours were favoured by Magsaysay-Ho and Saguil in connection to tempera and ink. The room showcases printed interviews, framed portraits, and photo albums of past solo exhibitions on each side. It also presents graduation portraits and anecdotes from the University of the Philippines 1933 yearbook by the front and rear areas, underlining Magsaysay-Ho and Saguil’s gendered engagement with the modernist aspirations of the time. The show’s nucleus interfaces Magsaysay-Ho and Saguil’s collegial contact simultaneously with their material inspirations, and with reference to an art world predominated by masters and fathers of art. In this show, modernism is twofold and imaged by and after women and their materials.

Paintings, studies, and photos of Anita Magsaysay-Ho in the yellow room of ‘Material Inspirations’. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

The yellow section to the left leads to Magsaysay-Ho. She is the cousin of former Philippine president Ramon Magsaysay (1907–1957) and the only woman forming the famed Thirteen Moderns, a coterie of emergent Filipino artists selected and led by trailblazing painter and champion of modernism Victorio Edades (1895–1985) in 1937. Aside from news clippings, photographs, and handwritten notes encased in glass display, paintings populate Magsaysay-Ho’s single L-shaped chamber. A substantial repertoire of these hang around the walls of the room, brought together like the women which Magsaysay-Ho crowds into scenes of tender habit and graceful ritual in lush and rural Philippines. The trope of ladies collectivised and confederated in one frame are systematised in Flores’s curatorial chassis. Of interest in this group of works are Magsaysay-Ho’s studies of ‘Pagbabayo/Pounding Rice’ (1947), ‘Luneta’ (1950), and ‘Mga Tagapagluto/Cooks’ (ca. 1952), made using acrylic, crayon, and ink, rather than her favoured medium of tempera.

Ink works on paper and photographs of Nena Saguil in the blue section of ‘Material Inspirations’. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

At the other end of the gallery, the works of Saguil wander about dim winding pathways. Flores directs visitors to the loose and mysterious rhythm of Saguil, the distant niece of the painter Juan Luna (1857–1899) and the first woman to earn an award in the prestigious Art Association of the Philippines competition in 1949. At this juncture, the small maze hosting pen-and-ink works on paper echoes the complex network of rotund and turning strokes that typify Saguil’s milky and gaseous corpuses. Of these, striking examples include ‘Paris’ (1958), ‘Untitled’ (1963), and ‘The Abyss’ (1963). The works were rendered ruminative by the show’s dark blue enclosures and made even more so by rare photographs of the artist in Paris.

Anita Magsaysay-Ho, ‘Study of Pagbabayo/Pounding Rice’, 1947, acrylic on paper. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

Nena Saguil, 'Untitled (S115)’, 1972, black ink on paper. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

Accounting for and testing the chasm between the figurative and the abstract, Flores foregrounds the artists’ use of materials in this exhibition. ‘Material Inspirations’ presents the depth to which Magsaysay-Ho and Saguil identified with their media: Magsaysay-Ho with tempera, and Saguil with ink. From similar starting points, they reunite here through the materials they chose and used to make their lives’ work.

‘Material Inspirations: Anita Magsaysay-Ho and Nena Saguil’ was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila from 9 November to 8 December 2024.