Malang’s drawings get a rare public viewing

Somewhere in the exhibit Mauro Malang Santos: Drawings at Ateneo Art Gallery’s Wilson L Sy Prints and Drawings Room is a glass case with works done by the artist best known as “Malang” during his battle with Alzheimer’s and, later, Parkinson’s, from 2006 until his death in 2017. The works—done in oil crayons on pieces of bond paper—show the artist’s physical and mental struggle, but also the persistence of his style: there’s the female subject that dominates so much of his work­—mother, angel, symbol of comfort. Anyone who knows someone who has gone or is going through this condition knows the bravery it takes to keep working, reaching into your past mastery for a way to continue communicating. 

His daughter-in-law Mona describes how the artist would joke, when people took him for a National Artist, that he was only a “National Book Store artist,” and how he would draw on just about any surface—napkins, tissue boxes, paper pads, even the tabletops at McDonald’s, where he’d have breakfast most mornings, leaving behind doodles that were instantly wiped away by their staff after he left. 

The 100-plus drawings and some paintings at the Ateneo exhibit come mostly from the home of Mona and Malang’s son, Soler—there’s a colorful painting of a woman figure given to them as a wedding gift, near the entrance. They wanted these pieces to get a public viewing, and the ongoing exhibit (until Feb. 28, 2026) offers a meditative overview of Malang’s main themes. Born in Manila in 1928, Malang’s work—early on as a cartoonist, drawing Kosme the Cop, Retired for Manila Chronicle, and later as a full-fledged artist—reflected the chaos and colors of the city, focusing on women vendors (often depicted in the middle of gossip), families, the labyrinthine barung-barongs, landscapes and cityscapes, and religious iconography found all around the capital.

Here, this world is largely rendered in black and white, charcoal, ink, with occasional splashes of color. Even in his final days, using oil crayons, one can see the density of line, the appreciation of form and space. There are snippets in glass cases that help us see his process through various renditions.

Malang loved to draw. Mona recalls trips to Paris—her father-in-law would go straight from the airport to the Arc de Triomphe, sketchbook in hand, and walk on foot all the way to the Louvre. At the end of the day, later in the Paris hotel, he’d put his feet into a hot bath; even then, he’d have a sketchbook in his lap, working on drawings.

Artist and West Gallery owner Soler says the couple went through over 1,000 works in pencil, charcoal, ink, oil, watercolor, and gouache to present this intimate depiction of Malang’s output from the 1960s onward. During the Arroyo years, the artist voiced criticisms of the National Artist selection process, which he felt had become too politicized.

As Ateneo Art Gallery director Victoria “Boots” Herrera notes, some of these works were visible at West Gallery, but most “have been in drawers” in the Santos home: sketches, sketchpads from travels. Curated by Soler, “it’s a valuable exhibit, showing us something of the creative process” of Malang.

Mona describes when Malang started to show signs of decline: “I know the last trip to the States, we noticed he was having trouble with balancing. It wasn’t diagnosed then (as Alzheimer’s), but we noticed that he was having (trouble) and then it gradually progressed.”

Family members and friends were gathered with media for the launch, and the show—like last year’s overview of Charlie Co’s work while undergoing dialysis—offers a poignant view of the artistic process and its endurance in the face of physical or mental obstacles.

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Mauro Malang Santos: Drawings is at Second Floor, Ateneo Art Gallery’s Wilson L Sy Prints and Drawings Room.