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Anita Magsaysay-Ho (1914 - 2012) Laughter signed and dated 1957 (lower right) oil on canvas 24" x 20" (61 cm x 51 cm) THE JOY OF WOMEN Anita Magsaysay-Ho’s ‘Laughter’ by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL There is a portrait of the young Anita Magsaysay in her studio at Cranbrook Academy of Art : Around her are works of art in various stages of progression, all of them depicting women. On an easel behind her is a painting of two women pounding rice — one already wears the signature scarf that would distinguish all her Filipina figures. Purita Kalaw Ledesma, founder of the Art Association of the Philippines would quote her as saying, “She believes that the Filipino face is top heavy, black hair, black brows, black eyes make the top color of the head heavy. For this reason, she generally paints her women to minimize the dark area of the head or she paints the pupils of the eyes as mere dots — and to give dramatic effect, she paints her figures as if a strong light were focused from beneath.” Magsaysay-Ho started painting at eight, “sketching with crayons”. A report in the Sunday Times Magazine, after her sensational first-prize win at the Art Association of the Philippines’ influential annual competition, said that “the turning point of her life came when a group of Cossacks were guests at her grandfather’s home.” One of them, a captain named Michael, was a painter. And while he painted, he astonished her — and instantly she made up her mind to become an artist as well. After the War, she would study at the Art Students League in New York where her teacher was Vaclav Vytlacil who was recognized in the ranks of Picasso and Braque. He was also known for being one of the founders of the American Abstract Artists group. Vytlacil would always tell his students (who included Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, and Cy Twombly), “Paint what you want.” And when the young Anita produced a work showing Igorots going down a hill, it drew this comment. “I don’t care how your people dress, paint their spirit.” Anita would thus embark on a journey of a lifetime, painting gestures and emotions, captured in expressions and movements that have come to embody and capture the spirit of the Filipino Women for several generations of art-lovers. American authoress Agnes Newton Keith would share the secret of the appeal of Magsaysay- Ho’s women : “Your market women are thin, sharp, witty, loquacious. They are both cunning and generous, both skeptics and believers. You are not sorry for them because you know you don’t have to be. If your gods were wealth and soft living, you’d paint pathos and weakness into those faces, instead, you put mysticism, strength, and love and joy of life. “And I can see it in your paintings that you love the vitality and life of your people, that you understand their tenacity of enjoyment and their delight in all their senses,” she noted sagely
