Pintô Art Museum is an exhibition space and contemporary museum located in the Philippines’ historic pilgrimage city of Antipolo outside of Manila. The museum was founded in 2010 to publicly exhibit the art collection of Filipino neurologist and patron of the arts, Dr. Joven Cuanang. The museum (pintô means door in Filipino) was founded on the principle that art plays a diplomatic role in bridging distinctive nationalities, worldviews, and communities.
Dr. Cuanang began collecting in the spirit of local artistic patronage in the late 1980s when he championed a revolutionary Filipino artist collective, The Salingpusa, through dedicated connoisseurship and acquisitions. The political movements associated with the People Power Revolution in 1986 and the fall of the Marcos Regime ushered an era of creative expression and artistic exploration.
Dr. Cuanang became a proponent for other practicing artists in the region and earned a reputation as a patron in the Filipino artistic community. The museum collection includes works by artists Elmer Borlongan, Mark Justiniani, Jose John Santos III, Emmanuel Garibay, Rodel Tapaya, Geraldine Javier, Marina Cruz, Joy Mallari and Antonio Leaño among others, whose ouvres compose a veritable record of the evolving contemporary cultural milieu.
The aesthetic traditions represented in the collection trace their roots to the history of Spanish colonial occupation and reference the tenets of academic and religious art, yet demonstrate a markedly different stylistic and technical trajectory following the proliferation of modernism in the mid-twentieth century. Artworks in the foundation’s collection reflect personal investigations of modernist movements such as surrealism, expressionism, minimalism, social realism, and conceptual art. The works are, however, distinguished by an innately Filipino adherence to cultural identity and national history.
Today, the Pintô Art Museum presents rotating exhibitions of the foundation’s collection and oversees an adjacent gallery space that continues to exhibit and promote contemporary Filipino artists. The museum is housed in a complex designed by artist Antonio Leaño and located within a two hectare botanical garden known as the Silangan Gardens, an ecological haven for the appreciation of local flora and fauna.
In international scene, Pintô International was founded in 2017 in New York City with a mission to promote the work of contemporary Filipino artists on an international stage. Founded to support the mission of its parent institution — museum and non-profit foundation Pintô Art Museum in the Philippines — Pintô International is the New York-based entity that drives Pintô’s global exhibitions and programming. The organization is committed to supporting the careers of pioneering contemporary artists of the region and to fostering global connoisseurship for their distinct artistic practices. Image Credit: Pintô Art Museum Facebook Page
a. 1 Sierra Madre St, Grand Heights Subdivision, Antipolo, 1870 Rizal
s. https://www.facebook.com/Pinto.Art.Museum.officialpage
