The 1970s was a decade filled with creative energy for Purita Kalaw-Ledesma, both as a writer and as an artist. In 1973, she took a step back from her leading role at the Art Association of the Philippines and dedicated her time to writing, resulting in two books being published, namely The Struggle for Philippine Art (1974) and Edades: National Artist (1979). Aside from writing, she returned—after a long hiatus that began in the mid-1930s—to her passion for making art. The exhibition follows Purita’s artistic impulse through a selection of artworks and archival materials from the 1970s, housed in the collection of the Kalaw-Ledesma Foundation, Inc.

Purita donated a significant number of studies of nude figures that she made through her occasional participation in the nude model sketching sessions conducted by the Saturday Group throughout the 1970s. Another set of Purita’s sketches comes from on-the-spot sketching sessions held during her two-week stay in China in April 1979 as part of a group of seven Filipino artist delegates. While distinct in subject matter, both groups of drawings were made in the company of other artists. It was also during this time that Purita explored making three-dimensional forms in terracotta. The lines and shapes created by Purita’s energetic yet gentle touch encapsulate the new sense of creative liberation that she had gained.

Throughout the 1970s, Purita continued her longstanding personal commitment to scrapbooking. The exhibition presents selected pages from her scrapbooks, which contain representations of women in magazine advertisements from that decade. Purita’s scrapbook pages, which juxtapose these images with fragments of unrelated articles, allow us to imagine the uncertainty of the sociocultural environment of the time within which she lived and created.

(Mayumi Hirano)