‘Kundiman’ at Pinto: Antonio Catral Leano’s patriotic love song

The sprawling Pinto Art Museum, nestled in the hills of Antipolo, has long been a magnet for art lovers. We love meandering along its stone pathways and steps, past gardens with uncommon blooms and tranquil fountains. All paths lead to seven galleries and three cafes, tucked into a setting that feels like Greece. The visual art and installations are expressive of today’s social realities and thought-provoking. Somber as these may be, we see mostly young people, in trendy attire, happily posing in the very photogenic corners.

Recently, Pinto founder Dr. Joven Cuanang opened his home right beside the museum grounds, for a special exhibit that took guests on a trip back in time. Visual artist Antonio Catral Leano presented “Kundiman,” a sepia-tinted collection in oil that used old photographs from the 19th to early 20th century, combined with stamps, scribbles and vintage cigarette wrappers. The gorgeous results are his own kundiman, or love song to his homeland.

Dr. Cuanang’s Spanish-style home in the late afternoon could not have been a better venue. Guests came dressed in Filipiniana finery for a tertulia, an old-fashioned gathering of art patrons and intellectuals with music and conversation. At that time of day, the house’s second floor balcony offered Manila’s cityscapes to the west, bathed in the golden light of sunset while to the south, Laguna de Bay and mountains shimmered in silver.

“This exhibit is very special,” said Dr. Cuanang, “because Antonio Catral Leano is one of the artists who won the Thirteen Artist Awards of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. In this sepia-colored exhibit, art and heritage come together. Tony is a polymath, and he designed the structure of Pinto, even the gardens.”

This means Leano is largely responsible for the whole experience one comes to enjoy. The white structures set on a slope amid old trees, dotted with ponds, art installations and even beds where one can gaze, lie back and gaze up at the skies.

The artist himself said, “We started with the gardens in the early ’90s and in the year 2000, we made the Pinto Art Gallery, before the museum. Then we started building the museum that opened in 2010.”

His career began in the late ’80s after majoring in painting at the College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines. In the span of 40 years, he has held numerous solo exhibitions and has been featured in national exhibits such as Art Fair and international exhibits in Tokyo and New York. He has represented the Philippines in international conferences and biennials held in Perth, Canberra, Yogyakarta, Osaka, and Fukuoka, and his works can be found at the Singapore Art Museum, Osaka Art Museum, Fukuoka Art Museum, and at his own ArtSector Gallery in Binangonan.

In addition to being a visual artist and the designer of Pinto Art Museum, he designed homes for fellow artists like Philipp Ines and Winner Jumalon; is a curator and was a former museum director for Pinto. He has several paintings, installations and multimedia works throughout Pinto, including “Forrest,” a tranquil room filled with green bamboo stalks, and paintings along one wall at Gallery 7.

Soft music wafted all throughout the gathering, and I later learned that the kundiman, a Tagalog love song, actually has a patriotic theme. Just as Rizal’s poem Kundiman is about his intense love for his country and the hope that she will soon be liberated from Spanish rule, Leano’s exhibit “Kundiman” is his tribute and love song to the Philippines’ past, present and future. 

Leano’s paintings for “Kundiman” are warm and golden, poignant and celebratory of the Philippine spirit throughout the ages. Everyday scenes are depicted of ordinary Filipinos—women going to the market or harvesting rice, a sabungero proudly holding on to his rooster. These could be the faces one sees today commuting on the MRT, or eking out a living selling wares on the sidewalk. 

“The paintings, bathed in golden warmth and harsh sunlight, capture the grit and grace of everyday life,” writes Angelika Llana Salgada Leano. “Women vendors journey to the market, with their bilao and dreams upon their shoulders, while farmers wear the lines of labor etched deeply into their faces. Beneath their fatigue, a quiet joy lingers—a testament to resilience. Stark contrasts of light and shadow dance across the canvases, mimicking the unyielding heat of the tropical sun and the equally unyielding spirit of the people.

“Rough textures and gestural pencil marks ripple throughout the canvases, their rawness reflecting the imperfection of memory. Scribbled writings, remnants of thought and history, evoke the epistolary nature of early photography, when images traveled as letters, carrying sentiments and stories across seas and time. Stamps, carefully selected for their imagery, symbolism and color—accentuate the works, offering a tactile connection to the past while grounding each scene in a larger framework of history. Vintage cigarette wrappers, which were historically used to aid the revolution, bearing nationalist slogans, further punctuate the revolutionary fervor of the era.”

The exhibit has at its heart a number of instrumental figures in the country’s journey to freedom from the chains of colonialism, like a very young Jose Rizal, Melchora Aquino (Tandang Sora) and the katipuneros. The struggles of the Filipinos during the Spanish times are relatable to us today—working hard to make a living, waiting for loved ones to return home from overseas, struggling to survive amid inequalities and the ever-rising cost of living. 

“This is already the third installation of my works with this theme of really Filipino,” Leano explained. The next show will also run along this narrative.”

His gift is to render the harsh realities of the past and the present in tender portraits, bringing the beauty of the Filipino struggle to light.

“Hinihintay Namin ang Iyong Pabalik” shows a mother and daughter, with faces full of longing, which could be taking place today in an OFW’s family.

In “Kayumanggi,” a dark lass leans, her face covered in shadows.

“Ang puso kong umiibig ay sa iyo ko iiwan” is scribbled across a painting of Maria Clara.