How a Spanish-Born Artist Came Home to the National Museum

A new destination, a landmark retrospective at the National Museum celebrates Juvenal Sansó’s extraordinary artistic legacy and the deep love for the Philippines that made him Filipino at heart.

Words Gerie Marie Consolacion
Photos courtesy of Fundacion Sansó
September 11, 2026

*Installation view of Sansó: Pusong Pilipino at the National Museum of the Philippines | Photo by Fundacion Sansó*

When the noise drowns out in a room full of people who loved the same person, that quiet, warm and a little tender, was in the air at the National Museum of the Philippines.

A time where friends, scholars, collectors, and colleagues gathered to celebrate Sansó: Pusong Pilipino, the first retrospective of Juvenal Sansó, staged through a partnership between the National Museum of the Philippines and Fundación Sansó.

By the time the program started, nearly 40,000 visitors had already walked through the exhibit since it opened its doors on August 7.

But the formal celebration was never really about the numbers. It was about memory. About the people he mentored, the people he loved, and a man who was never a Filipino citizen but who spent a lifetime insisting, in paint and in practice, that his heart belonged here.

A Retrospective Born Out of Love, and Out of Loss

Sansó passed away in 2025, and it was, of all places, during his wake that the idea for this exhibition was born, a small act of love that grew into something much bigger.

*Fundación Sansó’s Director Ricky Francisco | Photo by Fundacion Sansó*

“It was during the wake that our Director General attended, and then he and Fundación Sansó, Ricky, the Director, started talking about the possibility of this exhibit,” Director of the National Museum of the Philippines, Rica Estrada Uson shared during the exclusive interview with the Art Plus Magazine.

“So, that it happened a year after is really meaningful, just so, even after he’s gone, the general Filipino population can get to know him,” she added.

Jeremy Barns, Director General of the National Museum of the Philippines spoke with real tenderness about why the timing mattered so much.

“His memory is still very much fresh for those of us who knew him, who supported him or admired him,” he said.

“It’s really timely while things are still fresh to already transmit to the public what we all still have to say, express, and feel about him as a person, as a very senior artist, and as a kababayan.”

He confessed, addressing the crowd directly, quoting that it struck him as remarkable to be honoring “a master not from a distant past, but someone who lived and worked among us quite recently.”

He said he was “particularly delighted that he is being recognized relatively early and quickly after his passing,” when so many retrospectives elsewhere take decades to come together, if they come together at all.

Filling the Gaps in a National Collection

Before this exhibition, the National Museum held only two of Sansó’s works in its permanent collection: an early figurative piece called Madre Ho, and a later abstract seascape.

*Director General of the National Museum of the Philippines Jeremy Barns | Photo by Fundacion Sansó*

Six additional works, donated by private collectors and by Fundación Sansó itself, now round out the picture, including etchings, a dry-brush drawing from his Black series, a piece from his Brittany series, and a Floral series work from the 1990s.

“We only have a few of Mr. Sansó's works in the national collection,” Barns explained during the exclusive interview with our team. “So, we don't have our own versions representing his Black Period, his Floral Period, or his other outputs for which he's known. These gifts are really valuable because they help us fill those gaps in a meaningful way.”

Accepting the donation on behalf of the museum, Andoni Aboitiz, Chairman of the Board of the National Museum of the Philippines described what the gift means beyond the walls of the gallery.

“It expands our holdings of Juvenal Sansó,” he shared during the exclusive interview.

“The more works you have of a certain artist who was quite prolific, the better for the public to have a chance to see more of his work, especially the works are etchings and oils. So it expands the capacity of the art-viewing public to see more of his works, and to understand him better,” he added.

*Chairman of the Board of the National Museum of the Philippines Andoni Aboitiz | Photo by Fundacion Sansó*

He thanked the donors by name: Marlon Basilio, Elliot and Cherry Maguan, Mohammad Ronaghi, Jack Teotico, and Lilo Gutierrez, alongside Fundación Sansó, ‘for entrusting these exceptional works to the Filipino people through us, the National Museum.’

A Heart That Chose to Come Home

The exhibition’s title carries the weight of its central argument. Sansó was born in Spain, but as Fundación Sansó’s Director told the room, citizenship was never really the point.

“The main gist of this exhibition is to really show that even though he was not a Filipino citizen, he was Filipino at heart, and more so than ordinary Filipinos,” Francisco said. “Because aside from developing his aesthetics here in the Philippines, he retired here. He came back home. He gave his entire work, life's work, to the Filipino people, and in service to future artists. So in that sense, Sansó is truly pusong Pilipino.”

In his speech during the program, he traced the arc of that devotion: a young artist who studied at the University of the Philippines in 1948, who built an international career with works now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and who nonetheless kept returning to Manila decade after decade to exhibit, to teach, and eventually, in 2012, to retire.

“He may not have been a Filipino by nationality,” he told the crowd, “but the depth of his love for our country, and the choices he made because of that love, can teach any of us what it means to care.”

He was careful, too, to note that private institutions like Fundación Sansó occupy a role the bigger museums often cannot.

“Fundación Sansó, other than having a museum, also authenticates works by Juvenal Sansó, and these are things that bigger institutions cannot tackle,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Art Plus Magazine.

“Forgeries are really a rampant and very serious problem in the art scene right now, and that's one of the ways they actually strengthen the community.”

What the Numbers Don’t Say

Fundación Sansó’s own presentation at the event laid out just how much of this work runs on internal hustle rather than outside donations as tackled by Fundacion Sansó’s Assistant Director, Tenie Santos.

*Fundacion Sansó’s Assistant Director, Tenie Santos | Photo by Fundacion Sansó*

Over 98% of its operational and grant funding, the foundation’s team reported, comes from its museum shop, authentication services, and special projects. Donations make up only 2%.

Since it was established, the foundation has produced 39 graduates across four partner universities and allocated more than 17.7 million pesos to the Philippine art community between 2018 and 2025, covering scholarships, exhibition and curatorial grants, community development projects, and a newer research grant that has already funded three scholarly papers.

If we are a less than 10-employee team inside Fundación Sansó and were able to do all these things," Santos told the room, “we hope that everyone who is here today, like our scholars gathered here, are open for deep partnerships in small spaces like ours to provide a platform for young artists and upcoming artists, not just artists, but also researchers and curators.”

The talk closed on a line pulled from Sansó himself, from a post shared on his Facebook page when he was asked what his foundation was for.

“My aim is education,” he had written. "I hope Fundación Sansó can provide art education to the art-loving public as well as scholarships to deserving artists. Paying for art is what I can do to give back. I really mind that I should give back.”

The Scholars He Left Behind

If the exhibition made the case for Sansó’s legacy in oil and etching, it was the scholars in the room who made it with their whole hearts. Two of them, both graduates of Bulacan State University’s Fine Arts program, spoke about how the foundation’s support changed not just their finances but who they became as artists, and how they see themselves now.

*Fundacion Sansó’s scholar Gwen Dionisio | Photo by Fundacion Sansó*

Gwen Dionisio, Fundacion Sansó’s scholar, described discovering, almost by accident, that she was never really suited to the medium she started with.

“Before this, I could only afford acrylic paints, that's my medium,” she said during the exclusive interview. “But the grant allowed me to buy my very first oil paint set. And because of that, this completely transformed my journey.”

She spoke, too, about what it means to carry the foundation’s name into her own career.

“Wherever I go, I always introduce myself as a Sansó scholar,” she said. “Sobrang, sobrang I'm proud at pinagmamalaki ko po na isa po ako na Fundación Sansó scholar.”

Dionisio also reflected on how to introduce an artist most of her generation barely knows.

“Mas Filipino pa si Mr. Sansó kumpara sa mga Filipino talaga,” she said, arguing that his resilience through war and displacement is exactly what young Filipinos need to hear about today. “We as Filipinos, we should learn from his resilience. Yung pagiging matatag niya despite sa mga nakita niyang mahirap na sitwasyon.”

A Museum’s Own Reckoning

For the National Museum of Fine Arts, the exhibition also marked a personal milestone. Uson noted that this was her first project in the role, and that it brought her full circle to where her museum career began.

*Director of the National Museum of the Philippines, Rica Estrada Uson | Photo by Fundacion Sansó*

“When I began working in museum work 20 years ago, one of the first exhibitions that I visited was Sansó's etching exhibit at the Ayala Museum,” she recalled. “Now, two decades later, I find myself here, beginning a new chapter in my own professional journey.”

She framed the exhibition as a reflection of something larger about Filipino art itself.

“An artist's life can cross borders while their craft gathers richness from every place that they encounter along the way,” she said. “Perhaps this is why Sansó's art feels so resonant to many of us.”

Uson also stated Sansó's place in art education, “I don't think any art student can avoid learning about Sansó, and for good reason.”

“The way he shows Filipino scenes, Filipino landscapes, and really just the feel of the Philippines is very special. And I think what's most meaningful for me is that he's not afraid of showing the shadows, and the darkness, and the imperfection. I think that's very important.”

A Love Story, Still Unfolding

Sansó: Pusong Pilipino remains open to the public at the National Museum of the Philippines until February next year. But what stayed with everyone in that room was not the six newly donated works, or the dozens of scholars, or the millions of pesos quietly funneled into Filipino art education over the years.

It was the simple, plain fact of a man who did not have to love this country the way he did, and loved it anyway, again and again, until the very end.

As Francisco put it near the close of the program: “This exhibition, therefore, is more than a recognition of Sansó’s artistic accomplishments. It is a reminder to us Filipinos that nationalism can take many forms.” Sometimes, it seems, it simply looks like coming home.

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