Constancio Bernardo in Context

Image: Grabbed from the National Gallery of Singapore Facebook page. Constancio Bernardo.
Bernardian Synthesis No. 1, courtesy of Museo Bernardo Foundation, Inc.
Revisiting the 1978 Retrospective at the Museum of Philippine Art

Constancio Bernardo painted like no other Filipino in the 1940s. He began to explore the kind of
geometric abstraction initiated by Russian Suprematists even before being mentored by Josef
Albers of Black Mountain and Bauhaus at the Yale School of Fine Arts. Albers proclaimed that
Bernardo would become a great artist who will contribute a lot to Philippine art but upon
returning home, he was relegated to teaching art history rather than studio classes at UP.
Sidelined by Amorsolo and his ilk, he retreated to painting abstraction privately and showing
only figurative works in Manila Galleries until the 1970s when a younger generation fully
embraced the new artistic language.

By then he was middle-aged with a personality as subdued as his color combinations. While he
remained obscure and under-appreciated with intermittent recognition that never gained full
steam. No other Filipino painter has done abstraction that is as elegant and as authentic, that it
can hold a candle against artists in the Western Tradition. When he arrived at Yale in 1948 (he
was already aged 35), Josef Albers treated him as a contemporary rather than a colleague.

Constancio Bernardo's son, Angelo identified his father’s turning point from representation to
abstraction: “Two of his studies [on geometric abstractions] are dated February 24, 1950 and
March 14, 1950. (They could be pre-Albers). My father’s US journal from 1948 to 1952
mentioned a consultation with Albers for school requirements (only) on June 25, 1950. He
attended Alber’s lecture on color fields (and color abstraction) at Yale on September 20, 1950.”

Also mentioned were Bernardo’s other modernist mentors and influences at Yale: Wilhelm De
Kooning (who “went to his classes in clogs”); Pennsylvania-born Franz Kline, whose black and
white calligraphic works were originally sketches made on telephone books; and Washington-
born Robert Motherwell, “abstract expressionist’s philosophical spokesman.”

“They did not insist anything except [for us] to be free. Walang ginigiit kundi maging libre kami
[in art exploration],” Angelo recalled his father as saying.

Bernardo was also exposed to other European abstract painters who came ahead of Albers in the
US, such as Russian Jew Mark Rothko, Armenia-born Arshile Gorky, and German Hans
Hoffman.

Bernardo also admitted to poet Ricaredo Demetillo in 1956 one major influence: Dutch Piet
Mondrian, who painted “motion” by rolling on a canvas on the floor—with paint on his body.

A series of retrospectives in 2013 for his 100th birth anniversary have revealed the previously
unexhibited paintings , which are said to be only a fraction of the works he threw away and
covered up in countless moments of self-doubt. Also shown were sketches, evidence of the
natural skill that made Amorsolo see him as a disciple before the war. The recognition came too
late as Constancio Bernardo had already died quietly ten years ago in 2003. He is probably the
most highly educated and talented Filipino artist of his generation and yet the least likely be
elevated to the Order of National Artists.

The exhibition "Constancio Bernardo: The Early Drawings 1948-1955" explicitly refers to the
eye-opening exhibition "Constancio Bernardo: The Years in America 1948-1954" and its
catalog, published in 1992 by the Ateneo Art Gallery had been presented. Robin Rivera had
already written the main text in this first catalog, and the continuation of his investigation has
now resulted in the exhibition and catalog of drawings from Bernardo's years in Yale, organized
by the Ayala Museum and the Museo Constancio Bernardo, Ateneo has issued (overlaps exist
only to a limited extent).

The drawings of these early, experimental years, in which Bernardo developed his own imagery
along with his own artistic problem, are not more private than the paintings of that time, but they
are much clearer and consistent material of Bernardo's pictorial investigations. For paintings that
were intended to be public in the first place, only a few 'successful' pictorial solutions were ever
made, while in the drawings the various approaches, experiments and preliminary results of his
search can be traced much more clearly. These drawings have practically not reached the public;
almost all the exhibits in the extensive exhibition with more than 220 drawings and collages
come from Bernardo's private collection.

Constancio Bernardo came to the United States in October 1948, at the age of 35, on a
scholarship for faculty members of the UP College of Fine Arts; After the end of the scholarship,
he worked at the American school in Paris and returned in July 1954, after a disease, back to
Manila. In these years, especially in 1950/51, he developed in a series of experiments his own
problems, which are far removed from the simultaneous American developments of Color Field
Painting and Abstract Expressionism and which gave him a unique position in Europe as well as
in Europe granted to Filipinos. In contrast to the abstract expressionists in the United States,
while he partially took up positions of radical abstract painting in Europe, particularly Josef
Albers, he came to completely different types of paintings and problems, on the one hand,
spatially, between Europe and on the other hand, in terms of time, between the abstract
modernity that prevailed in the 1950s and late Modernism since the 1960s, so that he preceded
the new uses of 'materialistic painting' (Ryman) as a pioneer. It is a special pleasure in this
exhibition to understand the individual steps and attempts close up, in which Constancio
Bernardo finds, tests, discards and revisits solutions for his unfolding problem.

For his main interest since 1949, after Picasso-oriented beginnings, was to drive out of painting
composition and subjectivity, to liberate the painting from its dependence on pictorial intentions;
the painting should become anonymous and neutral, without subjective expression and symbolic
meaning, freed from the burden of subjectivity. Consequently, painting could no longer be
concerned with the creation of works or the self-expression of a creative subject: paintings could
become neutral only by picking up on what already exists (as form and color) and transforming it
into a painting , The most difficult problem, therefore, was deciding how, in what material, in
which color, in what format the transposition of what was seen (recorded or photographed)
should take place, what parameters of transformation of the existing into a painting could be
used. And just as a drawing or a painting should no longer be a creative work, it could no longer
be beautiful; only to the extent that it could no longer express a creative author, could it show its
own, previously unperceived, objective beauty, the beauty of what is already in sight, what is
quite obvious, but has not yet been seen or overlooked - and which Bernardo himself soon
captured in photographs.

There was a palpable sense of completeness in the way he approached his works, a proof of his
great involvement in each piece. He mixed his own paints, diligently worked in his studio, and
made his handiwork complete by creating the frames for his art works.

Bernardo tried to dispel the composition and intentionality of painting in a variety of ways: in
1950 he experimented with drawings he made blindfolded, in an automatic hand, or without
looking at the page, at the drawn branches or Hanger stapled. On the other hand, he recorded
found forms that were created by chance, such as cracks in a window or holes in the road
surface. These findings introduced an objective coincidence, which is at work both in the
formation of forms and in the finding of forms. In 1951, in connection with his work as a
teacher, he tested, partly with his students, the spraying and dribbling of ink; He also used the
traces of dirt left behind at work. A dream he described in a letter led to the next step, a
systematization of coincidence as well as stroke: "... I would be busy with a large injection work,
according to the method of the sixth graders and collleagues, when I suddenly came up with the
idea of a truly great work, something that could be linked to architecture ... This dream was
something I had been waiting for. " The result was 'Cité', a collage of slashed automatic
brushstrokes randomly recombined. The so-developed random distributions of collaged 'grids'
from the fragments of dissected drawings completely destroyed the unity and perceptibility of
the painted (or 'repainted', found in the world) strokes. Subsequent combinatorial attempts led to
a kind of textbook entitled "Form, Line, Color," which was not published, and which does not
show a strictly legal, logical sequence, but rather an increasingly irregular play of simple forms
and techniques To dye. For his colors, with which he increasingly worked in 1951, were found
colors: he used gummed colored paper, which can be used very well for collages. The specified
monochrome color areas (from a palette of about 20 colors) were also defined as shapes by
cutting, so that the color field and shape coincide. This work led to the well-known paintings of
several monochrome panels hanging side by side on the wall, involving the wall as a negative
and articulated space, and in 1955, after returning to New York, to the first curves.

Constancio Bernarco was born on December 22, 1913 in Obando in the province of Bulacan. He
studied Fine Arts from 1937 to 1941 and from 1947 to 1948 at the University of the Philippines,
where he received lessons from, among others, Fernando Amorsolo and his brother Pablo
Amorsolo. After obtaining his bachelor's degree he left for the United States, where he studied at
Yale with a Fullbright scholarship. There he received his bachelor's degree in 1951 and his
master's degree in 1952. After returning to the Philippines, he worked as a lecturer until 1978
and later as associate professor and assistant dean at the University of the Philippines.
In addition to his work as a teacher, Bernardo was active as an artist. He belonged to the second
wave of modernist artists including H. R. Ocampo, Vicente Manansala and Carlos Francisco.
Bernardo mainly painted abstract works of art and already held his first individual exhibition on
the UP in 1953. Later exhibitions followed in 1956, 1958, 1971 and 1973. In 1978, the Museum
of Philippine Art (MOPA) organized a retrospective of his entire career. Although Bernardo was
praised early in his career by art critics and other painters, recognition and publicity remained
with the general public. In contrast to his modernist contemporaries Ocampo, Manasala and
Francisco, he was not appointed a national artist of the Philippines.

Bernardo died in 2003 at the age of 89 in the Philippine Lung Center from the effects of
pneumonia. He was married to Nieves de Guzman and had two sons with her. The exhibition
will be on view at Ayala Museum Third Floor Galleries until March 2, 2014.

Update

Learn more about Constancio Bernardo's pursuit of abstraction in post-war Philippines through
his painting Bernardian Synthesis No. 1 in this talk by Gallery curator Clarissa Chikiamco.

Doors Into Constancio Bernardo: A Conversation with Clarissa Chikiamco

Sat 19 May 2018
5–6pm
Supreme Court Wing, Level 2, UOB SEA Gallery 9
Free admission for ticket holders. A limited number of seats are available on a first come, first
served basis.

Further reading

Bernardo, Angelo. Constancio Bernardo: A Life in Sketches. Soumak Collections, Manila.

2013. Softcover / 12 x 5.5 inches / 50 pages / Color

A companion to the monograph on Constancio Bernardo (1913 – 2003) published on the

occasion of the artist’s centennial anniversary in 2013, Constancio Bernardo: A Life in Sketches
is a personal biography written by the artist’s son, Angelo G. Bernardo. The book includes a
selection of rarely seen portraits and figure drawings by the artist who is honored for his
contributions to the development of abstraction in the Philippines. A comprehensive curriculum
vitae compiled by the author also provides a rich source of information about the artist’s life and
career that spans over 60 years.

Yolanda Johnson, Ringo Bunoan and Carina Evangelista, Constancio Bernard. Soumak
Collections, Manila. 2013. Softcover/ 12 x 11 inches / 144 pages / Color ISBN: 978-971-94920-
1-6
Constancio Bernardo (1913 – 2013) is a pioneering Filipino abstractionist known for his
geometric and color-field paintings. He returned to the Philippines in the early 50s after
graduating from Yale University where he studied under Josef Albers and pursued a life-long
commitment to painting and teaching at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts.
This monograph accompanies the centennial retrospective held at Ayala Museum in Manila in
November 2013 and provides the first opportunity to view the full range of Bernardo’s works,
from his critically-acclaimed abstract works to his lesser-known classical drawings and
figurative paintings. Includes texts by Yolanda Johnson, Ringo Bunoan and Carina Evangelista.