Constancio Bernardo show at Salcedo Auctions celebrates legacy and excellence

A rare and intimate exhibition of Filipino painter Constancio Bernardo is set to open on 20 July at Salcedo Auctions in Makati City.

The exhibition, titled “Constancio Bernardo: Color & Clarity,” showcases 19 abstract works spanning four decades of Bernardo’s career and marks the 15th anniversary celebration of Salcedo Auctions, the Philippines’ premier auction house.

The opening of the exhibition forms part of a joint anniversary event by Salcedo Auctions, DAILY TRIBUNE, and fashion designer Jor-el Espina, who will launch a five-piece capsule collection as a tribute to the modernist master.

Bernardo, a pioneering figure in Philippine abstraction, is widely celebrated for his analytical but expressive use of color, line and form, integral elements that defined his signature style and earned him a place among the country’s most influential post-war artists.

The upcoming show brings together rarely seen paintings now up for sale from the artist’s estate, Museo Bernardo Foundation, offering both enthusiasts and collectors a unique opportunity to experience the breadth of Bernardo’s legacy and take part in its continuous evolution.

“It is only fitting that this milestone exhibition honors a figure whose contributions to Philippine art are both profound and globally resonant,” says Ramon E.S. Lerma, chief executive officer (CEO) and chief specialist of Salcedo Auctions. “This exhibition is more than a retrospective — it is a celebration of legacy, a statement of purpose, and a beacon for the future.”

The exhibition highlights Bernardo’s artistic growth, tracing his journey from his exposure to Bauhaus-influenced pedagogy in Yale, where he studied under Josef Albers, to his later experiments with color field and geometric minimalism.

Among the selected works is the artist’s favorite — and thus not included for sale — the renowned “Perpetual Motion,” an oil-and-acrylic opus that Bernardo worked on starting in 1950 and continued to refine until 1980.

“That one has always been on display at his house, varying only in location over the years,” recalls the artist’s granddaughter, Leah Reyes, “sometimes in [the] sala, sometimes in [the] studio, but always where there is plenty of light.”

Another key work in the exhibition, Bernardian Synthesis No. II, dated 1978, is a triptych of five paintings. It demonstrates Bernardo’s pursuit of a transcendent visual language by establishing formal tension: between restraint in composition and liveliness in color. Its predecessor, Bernardian Synthesis No. I, is now part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery Singapore.

At the time, the Philippine art public was still apprehensive about the modernism that was quickly staking ground in the country. A modernist Bernardo came home to such a climate in 1953, bringing with him his recent work that Albers reportedly said would “create an explosion in art,” much to the disappointment of his former mentor.

Even so, Bernardo continued to explore the world of abstraction, exhibiting his works in solo and group shows both locally and abroad while also training young artists in UP, his alma mater. He mastered the manipulation of planar form through compositions that consistently examined how interactions of colors and lines induce emotion and project illusions of depth and movement.

He even dabbled in the abstract expressionist style, which can be seen in Tag-ulan, one of the works featured in the exhibition. The late art critic Leonidas Benesa counted Bernardo among the “quiet moderns,” alongside other exceptional artists like Manuel Rodriguez, Nena Saguil, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, and Juvenal Sansó, who “contributed in their own quiet ways to the modern art movement of the period.”

Today, with the revived interest of the global art landscape in Asian abstraction, Bernardo’s oeuvre, much like his temperament, stands in silence, but with an undeniable presence steadily gaining international recognition and emerging into the vista of a broader modern art history.

This was instantiated in 2023, when a major work of his reached a world-record sale at Salcedo Auctions after a heated bidding war ultimately won by a Japanese gallery owner.

Bernardo’s life and work are also being revisited and introduced to new audiences in educational media such as Cultural Cache Online by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).

Moments like these prove the persistence of Bernardo’s spirit in defying expectations. What was foreseen as an explosion — a singular phenomenon — turned out to be a reverberation — stable, recurrent and always deeply felt.

“Constancio Bernardo: Color & Clarity” will run from 20 July to 2 August at Salcedo Auctions, 2F, NEX Tower, 6786 Ayala Avenue, Makati City. Salcedo Auctions is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. every Saturday.

For more information, visit www.salcedoauctions.com or follow @salcedoauctions on Facebook and Instagram.