Celebrating Cesar Legaspi : Celeste Legaspi remembers Mang Cesar — brave, Modern, and color blind

Very few are aware that the late great National Artist Cesar Legaspi — known for the tempestuous reds of his youth and the lyrical greens of his twilight years — was color blind.

Mang Cesar’s daughter and OPM legend Celeste Legaspi-Gallardo remembers how as a nine-year-old girl, she would help her father identify colors in magazine clippings.

“That was so difficult, but during those times we were together and always talking,” shares Celeste. “And he was my number one critic when it comes to my singing and performing — pero laging cariño brutal.”

Cesar Legaspi painted every day — from 8 a.m. to 12 noon, and from 2 to 5 p.m., with naps and meals in between. Mang Cesar allocated a room in their old house in Baltao Road in Pasay near the airport as his studio. Before that, when he was still working in advertising to support his family, the man only had an easel near the dining table. As Mang Cesar became the master that he was, he built a separate studio in their bigger house in BF Homes (there, he’d look out the window and identify the Northern Star and there’d always be music playing… Mahler was a staple, Rachmaninoff wasn’t.) But things remained constant: Mang Cesar treated his craft like an office worker.

Celeste says, “To him discipline was very important. That’s how he overcame his color blindness. He’d arrange his work area, so that all the colors were properly identified. And then he would imagine the colors.” Makes us think of Beethoven putting notes together in a symphonic painting without actually hearing a damn thing. 

 “That was awesome: to be a painter and be color blind, and to be colorful,” she explains. “He never saw any of those reds. I saw it for him… but it wasn’t the same (laughs).”

And what a career it had been for Cesar Legaspi: creating a dream country of rich, imagined colors.

Celeste Legaspi and an org called Friends of Legaspi recently kicked off “100 Years of Cesar Legaspi” at the National Museum — to ask for assistance from art patrons in putting together the centennial program.  

“It’s my father’s centennial year — it will be his 100th year on April 2,” she says. Three Cesar Legaspi exhibitions are slated for 2017: “Lying in State” from April 2 to June 4 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP); “A Man and His Relations” from June 13 to Aug. 10 at the University of the Philippines Bulwagan ng Dangal (because Mang Cesar did a lot of work with UP students); “State of Grace” in December at BPI 1851 (where he did weekly Bible studies with fellow artists); as well as an event in Solaire where young artists will get to work on an unfinished Legaspi mural (aside from an exhibition of straight-from-the-vault bocetos).

“And it will be the start of the realization of a dream,” says Celeste, “to be able to put up the Cesar Legaspi Art Center.”

The center will stand in San Jose, Batangas. Talented artists — foreign and local — will be given residencies, while community-based events focusing on the visual arts and performing arts will be initiated.

And it’s quite fitting that Mang Cesar’s “The Survivor” is on the event poster.

“Three of his artworks that we will never sell are ‘Gadgets,’ ‘Descent’ and ‘The Survivor.’ When he gave (the third painting) to my mother, Vitaliana Kalugdan-Legapsi, he said, ‘That is the Filipino people.’ Nag-iiyakan kami whenever we talk about it.”

Celeste also gets emotional when she talks about her father succumbing to prostate cancer.

“When my father became really, really sick, my mother’s Alzheimer’s Disease worsened. So nung nawala na father ko, parang nawala na rin ang mother ko even if she lasted for 10 more years. Kasi parang she crossed a line — her entire persona disappeared. She turned into a mere shell.”

She adds, “I also remember when we were at Chinese General Hospital and my father was dying, and my daughter Lala was hiding under the sofa because it was too painful to watch. Wait... (trying to stop herself from crying). Baka matanggal eyelashes ko (laughs).” 

But shiny, colorful memories are a-plenty.

Mang Cesar’s favorite song of Celeste is her cover of La Vie en Rose, which she sings in three languages: English, Pilipino and French. 

“My father was really enamored of all things French. My nickname, by the way, is Maricelle (short for Marie Celeste). During the Fifties, my father considered himself a modern man.”

Mang Cesar, as part of the 13 brave Moderns, took a stand against the pre-war domination of classical realism and all things idyllic, and embraced modernity in all its frightening expressionist splendor.

“That (philosophy) was reflected in his entire being. My mother was a probinsyana who hails from Cavite. When she got married, she had to learn to cook Spanish dishes for my father kasi nga modern siya (laughs). My father’s art marked the arrival of modern art in the Philippines.”

And the man’s paintings were always about his milieu: planters divining crops in a devastated land, laborers transforming into triumphant gods of production, the symphony of jeepneys on the sheets of concrete, among other images.

There were also memorable Saturday Group sessions headed by Mang Cesar (“Gutom na si Mang Cesar” was the rallying cry of the artists when they themselves feel the pangs of hunger); but Celeste would always remember the Sunday lunches.

“My mom would cook… Spanish dishes which she became quite good at… and then my father would crack a joke — and he would always miss the punch line (laughs).”

Something red or green would be swimming in the Sunday broth and it would always look glorious even to the colorblind master.

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For information on the 100 Years of Cesar Legaspi activities, call 0945-1299615, email cesarlegaspiorg@gmail.com, and follow Facebook.com/CesareLegaspi.org.