J. Elizalde Navarro on his friend, Larry Tronco

The Painter's Eye--

In 1953, J. Elizalde Navarro had written this in a magazine column.

The title of the column was The Painter's Eye - with respects to Maurice Gosser, well-known New York artist who wrote a book entitled "The Painter's Eye."

This column will be dedicated to reporting on the doings of our local art world especially that of the painters. From time to time I will feature a personality of up and coming artists. And, I promise to present him as he is seen thru a painter's eye. My first personality is Larry Tronco. Young artist from Negros. He is presently connected with an advertising agency and was formerly the Art Editor of the University of Santo Tomas' "Varsitarian."

Larry Tronco came home from a year's stay in the Escuela Central de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, Spain. The scholarship under the Instituto de Cultura Hispanica of the Spanish Government made it possible for him to look at the famous Prado and other museums, tour the countryside and missed being solicited by beautiful Spanish girls at the famous Gran Via. In school he was subjected to drawing from casts and elementary composition which he had painfully executed while still a student in the College of Fine Arts in the University of Santo Tomas. Nevertheless he drew and was easily on top of a lot of scholars under the same scholarship plan. He had classmates from the United States, Peru, Brazil, Columbia, etc. 

It is noteworthy to mention that with a lot of disturbing factors obtaining in Spain, he has emerged with a style not quite really his own, but worth developing. Before he left for spain, I noticed this style, but then his figures had no trace yet of the miserabilism proportion. His "Vendedores Ambulantes" won for him the first prize in the Semana Filipina — a celebration for the Filipino scholars in Spain. Among those who participated in the contest were Cesar Legaspi and Arturo Luz both in the same scholarship with Larry Tronco. The outcome really did not determine that Larry Tronco is better than the two.  And speaking comparatively, a lot of our local art winners are not much better artists than their participating contemporaries.  Larry Tronco is also a cartoonist.  Somewhere in these pages are littered his cartoons about Spain.  He has been doing this style for some time before he went to Spain.  Some will say that his cartoons smack like Elmer Abustan's style, but then he is a better draftsman than Abustan any old time.

Larry Tronco - 1929-1985

Lloyd Tronco