A massive painting of town festivities in an idealized rural setting hangs at the Power Plant Mall. This is Mauro Malang Santos’s (more popularly known as Malang) 1960 painting Fiesta.
For a cartoonist like Malang, whose comic strips were compact and small, this painting is massive at 217 x 461 cm. This work is from the Lopez Museum and Library. The figures are reminiscent of Malang’s cartoons, offering a multi-perspective witnessing of small-town happiness.
It is crucial to note that February, National Arts Month, has just passed. In the shortest month of the year, we are supposed to celebrate artistic contributions to the economy, society, and culture. Malang’s work at the Power Plant Mall deserves a closer and longer look despite its position at the entrance/exit, where security guards keep watch.
The figures in Fiesta combine Larry Alcala’s graphic shorthand observations of people and, I argue, Vicente Manansala’s cubist forms. This is arguably an early work of Malang’s, but one can already see the idyllic charm he would later bring to his canvases. The playfulness of his forms became even more pliant in his later works. Over time, Malang transformed his cartoonish figures into painterly strokes, shaping quirky human forms.
Fiesta showcases Malang’s fascination with the overlapping dance of geometric shapes coalescing into recognizable forms. His future works retain this familiarity, but they are rendered with greater confidence in his distinct visual idiom—a playful kind of distortion. In a way, Malang became a master of idealized Filipino rural imagery.
One of the most interesting aspects of Malang’s life is how he was vital in helping Filipino komiks illustrators get hired by major American comic publishers. In the 1970s, DC Comics sought talent from outside the United States. One of the countries they looked to for talent was the Philippines. What they found here was an abundance of skilled artists who would go on to change how American comics were produced, drawn, and laid out.
Filipino komiks luminaries like Nestor Redondo, Alfredo Alcala, and Alex Niño were among those recruited by American comics publishers. Malang’s cartoonist roots and influence may have contributed to his involvement in this labor export. It must be noted that even today, numerous Filipino comics illustrators work for international publications. This National Arts Month, we recognize the significance of cartoons and comics in shaping our identities and driving strong international sales.
During the visits and negotiations, Malang served as a key contact for the DC Comics representatives in their discussions with Filipino artists. In my recent email interview with Paul Levitz, former DC Comics publisher, he shared a memory from one of DC’s head executives who visited the Philippines in the 1970s.
Levitz recounted: “One amusing anecdote—Joe Orlando asked Malang (I paraphrase): ‘You’re a small, poor country. How do you have so many talented artists?’ Malang replied: ‘In America, you don’t think everyone can become a mathematician, but you teach everyone to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. In the process, you find who has mathematical talent. In the Philippines, we think everyone should be able to draw a horse.’
“I don’t know if that was a fair assessment of your arts education then or now, but it seems logical.”
Malang asserted a strong “naturalization” of Filipino talent in the visual arts at the time. But does that assessment still hold true today, in an era of TikTok dances and institutional neglect of the arts?
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social