Never in the business of art!

Last Saturday, Nov. 14, an art exhibit opened at Gallery Big in Makati. From Florence, Italy, maestro Alberto Gallingani brought his famous talent to our country, without much fanfare or publicity. When we were first introduced at the exhibit opening, his gentle demeanor struck me. Behind those gentle eyes, however, I told myself, lies great talent, the kind that could have provoked George Bernard Shaw to say: “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” Painting is, after all, silent poetry, as poetry is painting that speaks.

His works have been exhibited and acclaimed not only in his own country (Rome, Milan, Florence, Torino, Bergamo, etc.), but also in Europe, the United States and South America.

At 70 years of age, maestro Gallingani has exhibited since the early 1970s in Paris, Nice, Lyon, Rouen, etc., in France; in 1972, his works became highly acclaimed at the International Art Exhibition commemorating the Bertrand Russell Centenary in London; quite a number of times in New York, California, Detroit in the US; Hamburg, Mannheim, and Stuttgart in Germany; in Barcelona, Spain; Sao Paolo and Porto Alegre in Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Budapest, Hungary; Istanbul, Turkey; Athens, Greece; Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan; Perth, Australia; and in other places too numerous to mention.

The list could go on and on. But why, after all these years, with his career spanning almost half a century, did the maestro finally arrive on our shores? The reason, to my mind, lies in the great talent he discovered in his student of five years, Regina de Leon.

Regina, now 50, studied much earlier in Rome for five years, but what she took up in that length of time was business, not art. She worked with her father, the late Oscar de Leon, for 25 years. He was a business executive in his younger days who developed a successful real estate business. Regina now says that it was more out of a sense of obligation that made her immerse herself in the business world of her father.

Perhaps it was her late mother, Virginia, who was known to have sought refuge in art and poetry “when her spirits were low” that could have sprung the desire to paint and the love of art in her.

She is the eldest of the seven good-looking daughters of the late Oscar and Virginia de Leon. They were all present at the exhibit opening, now all forging lives of their own.

Through her 25 years in the world of business, Regina’s desire to paint and her love of art stayed with her. She has studied the works of the masters: Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Botero, the two Bueno brothers, Ledda and Giorgio de Chirico.

Residing permanently in Florence now has lifted her spirits, especially since she fell in love and married a nice Italian gentleman, Jose Pasqualetti. Possessing a dual nationality (Philippine and Italian) she now lives in Florence with Jose and her two children by a previous marriage, Nicole and Stephen, both graduates of the Ateneo, who are living their dreams in Italy, too. Nicole designs and makes her own brand of jewelry in Florence, and Stephen has decided to study music in London.

It was only in 2004 that Regina decided to seriously take painting lessons in Florence. Gallingani was teaching Nicole design when Regina first met him and that’s how the professor-student relationship started. She is still the extremely gifted student that the maestro has taught for the last five years. She has already completed an extensive collection of her works, for she has been painting constantly. Her works have been displayed at the famous Excelsior and Grand Hotels in Rome.

The underlying concept for the Gallingani-De Leon joint exhibit in Manila is embodied in what the maestro wrote, captioned “A Florentine Story.” It was written in Italian, and translated by Regina’s daughter, Nicole. It follows hereunder:

“I met Regina some years ago in school. I was teaching freehand design and her daughter, Nicole, was my student. She asked if I would be willing to give her painting lessons and I was curious because I knew that here was a person who had a need to express herself, to create a new language to communicate the way she saw the world … and I accepted.

“The relationship between a teacher and student is a balance between give and take — I proffered my knowledge of the ‘craft,’ I shared the history of art as I knew how to tell it, putting to light all its contradictions and marvels, and I was rewarded with a serene approach to the canvas, the detachment of one who has been touched by art and uses it as a means to convey serenity and happiness, in contrast to the popular view of the artist as ‘prey to existential pessimism…’ Two worlds seemingly distant and yet definitely complementary, especially today, in a contemporary world so complex and without means of escape.

“The focal point of these last years of steady work is Regina’s realization of her purpose as an artist: to bring joy. This is the goal! Sustained by her education and technique, her work has evolved much, her efforts have paid off and today Regina is ready to face the public in an art gallery. And on the occasion of her debut, in her Manila, she has asked me to join her. Two artists. One student, one teacher. Two visions confronting the contemporary, two ways to tell the story through portraits and figures, sometimes grotesque, ironic, whimsical, striking, or sweetly stylized, like Regina’s ‘Donnone,’ or large women. And we arrive at today with a crowd of people, personalities, anonymous comers and goers, stolen portraits and all that passes around us, filtered by the sensibilities of two authors. Optimism and pessimism, two sides of the same coin.

“That all of this was set against a backdrop that is Florence isn’t a coincidence, nor is it secondary … because the air we breathe is charged with the spirit of the renaissance that made this city great. And today that spirit lives in those who believe that art helps us to live.”

In my conversations with Alberto Gallingani and Regina de Leon, an underlying message seemed to be that, from the point of view of the genuine artist, the material, the business dimension, should not be a consideration at all. It can never be a business.

Indeed, Regina was living her dream in Italy, constantly with her paintbrushes, indulging in her joy, when one day several months ago, she became very ill. And the tragic and cruel thing about it was the fact that she could not paint at all. She found herself devoid of the physical capacity and mental energy to do so. She was completely without the desire to paint … absolutely without any inspiration whatsoever.

One day, she was viewing the tragedy of Michael Jackson’s death over television in Florence. Regina has been an MJ fan from the time she heard him sing I’ll Be There at a concert in Manila quite a number of years ago. From then on, as she tells it now, she has been inspired by his music.

While reliving those days and watching the television coverage in her bedroom, there seemed to be, as she tells it now, an inner voice that told her to pick up her painting where she had left it — at her sick-bed. “I was certain it was the Lord telling me to paint and indulge in my art,” she says. “That day remains etched in my memory for it was the day my art was reborn.” That was also when her Michael Jackson series was born.

Regina e-mailed me from Florence when she was ill. I understood the literal meaning of the words and believed the message they gave. But the underlying current that gave rise to these words I was not aware of. As she repeated them in my interview with her, that’s when I found out what had happened from her sickbed.

In ending, may I quote those words: “God gives us the gift of talent and we know that, because he puts that passion in our hearts, he will find every excuse to bless that talent.”

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