Kuya Malang

If he was my kuya (elder brother), how is it possible that I was at the same time his ate (elder sister)? That’s one of the paradoxes you face when you have a friend like the artist Malang, who died the previous Saturday at the age of 89. At that age he was certainly my kuya, my more-salt-than-pepper hair notwithstanding.

I can’t recall exactly when he started calling me ate; certainly it wasn’t from when we first knew each other way back in the late 1970s (I didn’t call him kuya then either). Back then we would go a-lunching, led by STAR founder Betty Go Belmonte, with the writer Johnny Gatbonton, the late National Artist Ang Kiukok, as well sometimes as the artists Agustin Goy and Romulo Olazo. One time after lunch at Poon’s in the old San Carlos apartment, Betty and I stood on the sidewalk waiting for the car; as the guys walked off in the direction of A. Mabini street Malang quipped, “‘Wag kayo tatayo-tayo dyan, mapagkamalan pa kayo na…” with a wink and a glance at the building across the street, reputed to be where local Chinese men housed their “very special female friends” from Taiwan or Hong Kong.

Many years later, when the folks at Crucible Gallery would organize Saturday sketching sessions, I had on a few occasions helped arrange for ballet dancers to sit as models, the late great Anita Magsaysay-Ho wanting to sketch ballerinas in tutus. But one Saturday when they had a nubile starlet in for a nude sketching session, I dropped by for lunch – what else would I be doing there! – as they were winding up the morning session. Malang immediately told the artists, “Dali, kain na tayo at baka maisipan pa ni Doreen mag-pose ng nude” and, turning to me, said, “You have to pay us to sketch you ha!”

He was irreverent yet never offensive, his quips always coated generously with cariño and delivered with a deadpan humor that often, a few significant moments later, was followed by hearty laughter – you and him convulsing with laughter, even if the joke was on you.     

As an artist Malang had no formal training (I think he left after a month or so at the UP College of Fine Arts); he was a cartoonist and worked in advertising and newspapers before finding his true calling. His first one-man show in 1962 sold out, setting him on a path of success after success as an artist praised for his “highly imaginative use of color.”

In 1981, I bought a still life in oil that Malang had dated June 10. I have since given that painting to my nephew, his birthday being on that date. Last June 10, a Saturday – a significant day as sketching day, and also the day of the week the group of artists that Malang was a major part of was named after, the day they met (early on at the iconic Taza de Oro restaurant where the hot roast beef sandwich was life defining) to sketch and what we would today call to chill – Kuya Malang breathed his last in the early morning, leaving to paint the sky with the brilliant colors that illuminated his many, many canvases.