Naghaharing Reyna (Queen on High)
signed and dated 2004 (middle right)
mixed media
48" x 24" (122 cm x 61 cm)

PROVENANCEPrivate Collection, Manila


The Queen’s Gambit by LISA GUERRERO NAKPILJosé John Santos is one of the Philippines’ most important contemporary artists, drawing in his avid Filipino and international audiences to a mysterious but personal narrative — but also to his keenly observed insights into our psyches. He is an expert in the taut relationship between men and women, husbands and wives, and there is almost always a sense of the autobiographical in these works. There are, after all, no accidents, in a John Santos painting. The mood is set with the theme of playing cards, a reference to the luck of the draw that so often happens in matters of the heart. The ‘Naghaharing Reyna (Queen on High)’ is a favorite Filipino reference to the country’s matriarchal society. The queen reigns not over the heart in this case, but the hard-edged diamond, a symbol of practicality, if not pragmatism. She sits in studied languor with one arm under her head as if to give the appearance of ease; but of course, the opposite is true. As her opposite is the king, wearing a paper crown. While the queen is dressed in old-fashioned terno and panuelo, he is garbed in a sleek modern tee and sports jacket. The queen reigns under the Filipino-language banner “Reyna”; he rules in the millennial English world as “King.” The numerals XXIV suggest that it is for all of the twenty-four hours. Of course, things are never as they seem in a John Santos painting and there are endless revelations to be made as he examines past, present, truth and memory. The Queen’s Gambit by LISA GUERRERO NAKPIL José John Santos III has continued to break new ground as an artist. Named as one of the Cultural Center of the Philippines 13 Artists in 2000, he has gone from strength to strength. He exhibited at the The Armory Show, one of the oldest and most important art fairs in the United States. In 2018, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. — the modern and contemporary art museum of the Smithsonian Institution which is the national museum of the United States — accepted the donation of the José Santos III sculpture, “The Order of Things No. 3.” This event marked the first time that a Filipino artist, or a Southeast Asian artist for that matter, was accorded this honor.