CARLO MAGNO
CARLO MAGNO (TSIAUSAS) studied at the Mapua Institute of Technology, taking up Architecture for a year, before moving to the Philippine Women’s University, as a fine arts major in advertising.
It was an art auction in 1980 that had inspired him to take up painting, influenced by PWU alumni Prudencio Lamarroza and Rafael Cusi. In the same year, he won first prize in a YMCA-sponsored painting competition, titled “Bayanihan.” He was also conferred by PWU the Outstanding Leadership Award for his contributions to the Likarla Artist Group. The following year, he won the Grand Prize in the Hispanidad Art Contest sponsored by the Spanish Embassy and held his first solo exhibit at the Greenhills Art Center.
Magno has made a name early in his career painting subjects of old houses, antique furnitures and cultural artifacts. In a hyperrealist manner, Magno captures the spirit and ambience of well-appointed homes, churches with spacious interiors and sprawling gardens, emblematic of his generation’s nostalgia for the past. This was the style he immersed himself in until the 1990s, when he had two solo shows, at the Ayala Museum Gallery (1990) and the Madrigal Art Center (1992).
Magno made the difficult yet epochal transition from figuration to abstraction in 2003, called “Transformation,” at the Galerie Joaquin, mounting large-scale abstract pieces in luminous red hues with gestural brushstrokes on surfaces that allude to the controlled accident. Here, he incorporated, in strong textures, intense light sources, elements of Oriental abstractionism, such as calligraphy and the inherent materiality of medium.
Two follow-up exhibits were mounted since then: “Higher Ground” and “Transcendence,” both confirming his phenomenally successful transition. Aside from the abstract works, predominantly in red, tempered with shades of grey, metallic copper and bronze, and daubs of black, Magno had also worked in sculpture, with his trophy-sized pieces in stainless steel, of predominantly geometric forms, exuding a strong eloquent statement and distinctive for their utter simplicity reflecting the artist’s evolving aesthetics.
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Transendence
Mixed Media 48 x 36 in
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Restored II
Mixed Media 48 x 36 in
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On Higher Ground II
Mixed Media 36 x 48 in
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Multiple Horizons II
Mixed Media 30 x 30 in
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Rhapsody in Gold
Mixed Media 36 x 48 in
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