Valeria cavestany’s functional art
July 19, 2003 | 12:00am
Artists may be firmly grounded in their personal cultural and ethnic roots, but their art is universal in appeal, transcending all cultures and traditions.
One of the most innovative modernist-style painters in the Philippines, 41-year-old Fil-Hispanic painter Valeria Cavestany, is a pioneer in a unique art medium showcased in her Biombos y Cajas de Luz exhibit at The Drawing Room of Metrostar Building, 1007 Metropolitan Avenue, Makati City, opening today and running until August 5. What makes this art exhibit different and unique for the Philippines is the painter’s deft use of what she calls biombos de luz or dividers/lamps – huge translucent dividers framed with iron and lights, multi-functional as decorative art works as well as useful for elegantly dividing spaces in rooms and halls.
When this writer was invited to a preview tour of Biombos y Cajas de Luz, a collection of 60 art works evoking contradictory feelings of new wave and nostalgic subjects and showcasing the painter’s aesthetic prowess and intensity. This exhibit manifests the fusion of Western and Oriental influences on Cavestany’s art, creating a delightful multi-cultural and effervescent visual fiesta of vivid colors, moods and images. An admirer of painters Perico Pastor, Antonio Tapies and her "super favorite" Austrian artist Egon Schiele, Cavestany is steadily earning a solid reputation for originality, boldness and creativity.
Describing herself as "a Fil-Hispanic artist," Cavestany is married to a Filipino businessman with Basque roots, her father Fernando Cavestany is from Barcelona which is located in Spain’s Catalan region, while her Spanish mestiza mother Maria Freixas is from the Philippines. Cavestany told The Philippine STAR:
"My youthful ambitions and dreams changed with age. When I was 12 years old I wanted to be a nun (laughs). When I was 16 I just wanted to love. By age 17 and 18, I was a socialist who just had these ideas about a lot of unfairness in our world. Today, I just want to be happy. I love to study, to do art, I have always dreamt of helping change the world. "
On her roots Cavestany adds:
"My ancestral hometown Barcelona is also the home of the famous architect Antonio Gaudi. It was from his name where the English vocabulary got the word ‘gaudy.’ Gaudi revolutionized the modernist movement, which was called ‘noucentism’ in the Catalonia region of northern Spain. The topnotch painter Joan Miro was also from Barcelona. As a kid of 14, I first met the great Spanish painter Salvador Dali in Cadaques, a fishing village in northern Spain and near France. I spent my summer vacations in Cadaques, where a lot of artists and leftists go, where people dream and plan the movement for democratic changes. This movement was influenced by the ideas of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre."
On her knowledge of Mandarin and Chinese painting Cavestany says: "I studied the language and Chinese painting here in the Philippines, and Spanish textile designs in Spain. I studied Philippine History at the University of the Philippines, because I wanted to know the role of colonialism in Philippine history. I also studied in the Asean Institute of Art. I’m like a sponge, I absorb many influences and love to learn."
Cavestany speaks English, Spanish, Mandarin and understands Filipino. She studied the ancient art of traditional Chinese brush painting under the well-known couple Mr. and Mrs. Hau Chiok. She started her artistic career 15 years ago, when art critic Dr. Rod Paras Perez saw her Chinese paintings and invited her to join the women’s art exhibit he was organizing.
On art in the Philippines Valeria adds: "There’s an enormous wealth of talent here in the Philippines, but very little support. We need the support for artists. In the US, there are galleries that pay salaries to painters to support their artistic vocations. Even the writer Saramago, he won the Nobel Prize because of his literary talents and with the important support of the Portuguese government."
Cavestany says of her latest art works: "The painting or image is done on cloth with an iron frame. Lighted all around the subject on the cloth is a commercial image of a traditionally-clothed Japanese lady. These images appear also on lighted boxes decopage (transferred image) on paper and painted on top. Decopage is a French process, I add photos to my paintings, sort of halo-halo. The boxes are made of aluminum and lighted inside, and these are closed with glass and a diffuser. My style is contemporary and functional."
Even before the launching of the art exhibit here in the Philippines, Valeria Cavestany is already busy preparing for an exhibit of flower paintings in Madrid in November this year. This innovative artist reveals that she looks forward to joining the prestigious Arte Contemporareo Español or ARCO art fair with Manila’s Hiraya Gallery in February 2005.
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