28/05/2026
The Art of Francisco Gorospe Sy
Semiotics Deconstructed
Paul Blanco Zafaralla
FRANCISCO PACO GOROSPE SY was an outsider among his fellow visual artists along Mabini Street, Malate, Manila, by reason of the varied contents of his body of work, and how he gave them form. He had a wide range of subjects, and an equally wide range of styles. This was his identity. And isolation from the rest.
Mabini Painters
In his book Art in the Philippines, Castaneda says that the Mabini painters were not “organized” and “in accordance with the demands of the season,” painted the faces “Igorots, Ifugaos, Mindanao Moslems, Bagobos and Mangyans” in the style of Amorsolo. Castaneda continues that “(t)his aping became a preoccupation as a means to fill up popular demands……”
Any Mabini painter who wanted to join in the annual art competitions and exhibition sponsored by the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) had to break away from the Amorsolo style and make his own mark. Four of them won major prizes, namely: Romeo Enriquez, Gabriel Custodio, Oscar Navarro, (Castaneda) and Manuel Rodriguez Sr.
These painters won the major awards less than a decade before Gorospe enrolled in the University of Santo Tomas as a Fine Arts student in 1960. After one year, he dropped out and apprenticed under David Cheng, a Hongkong artist.
Gorospe met the “top brushes” of Mabini, like Roger San Miguel and Francisco Ello—all three of them whom were to be called the Mabini triumvirate. He was now exposed to modern art. But he had his eyes, mind and heart fixed on various facets of the Filipino and Philippine culture.
(Quote from the book Revisiting Mabini Art, published in 2013, Germany)
