MANILA, Philippines—Businessman-artist Joey A. Velasco, the painter of “Hapag ng Pag-asa,” a celebrated mural that contemporizes the Last Supper and shows Jesus Christ breaking bread with hungry Filipino street urchins, died early Tuesday morning after a prolonged battle with kidney cancer. He was 43.

Velasco astounded the art world in 2005 with the 4 x 8 feet “Hapag ng Pag-asa,” which he never sold to collectors but exhibited around the country, mainly in churches and sacred museums and galleries. Collectors got a copy of the work through limited-edition reproductions.

In the painting, Christ is anachronistically presented as the traditional hooded figure with Aramaic features. But the traditional Apostles have been replaced by street children and young castaways.

Velasco collected the stories of his children models in the book, “They Have Jesus: The Stories of the Children of Hapag.” Proceeds from the sale of the book, as well as the sale of reproductions, and donations went to a foundation to assist the poor children.

Today, the children of “Hapag” enjoy, more or less, rehabilitated lives. During the first night of the wake at Funeraria Nacional, the children were present, praying for the artist and thanking him for saving them from the streets.

The news of Velasco’s death has touched off a wave of sympathy for the family of the artist whose religious-themed paintings incorporate social commentary and social activism.

Before he expired at 1 a.m. on Tuesday, friends and supporters from Catholic groups, had gathered at the National Kidney Institute to see if he could still rally, like he had done previously when he seemed at the brink of death.

“Joey’s on his way to our Lord’s dwelling place,” physician-artist Dan Lerma texted this writer before Velasco gave his last breath. “Let’s thank our Lord for Joey who has touched our lives in so many ways.”

Street children as models

Velasco’s work seems to restore the religious meaning of the genre painting. Adding poignancy to his work is the fact that he used real street children as models for the painting.

One of them was a girl who belonged to a family squatting at North Cemetery. One boy was a pushcart scavenger whose father was a drug addict. Another boy had been in and out of jail for petty criminality.

Table of love

In his foreword to Velasco’s book, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales invites readers to hang “Hapag ng Pag-asa” in their homes. “Welcome this portrait as your own and make the dining table serving life not just a table of hope, but a hapag ng pag-ibig (table of love).”

Velasco had said he wanted to instruct his own four children through his artist-models of the value of life. “I have failed to show to my children the real situations of life since we have lived a comfortable life,” he said.
“I hope to hang ‘Hapag’ on the wall of my dining room to remind my children to be grateful for what they have to eat, for what they have been served. And mostly, it is to let them remember that many children have none to eat,” he explained.

Christ in contemporary setting

Another celebrated painting of Velasco is “Kalakbay,” which more or less used the same ingenious style of recasting Christ in contemporary setting, this time in the agrarian tinderbox that is Negros.

The painting shows the biblical Christ squatting on the hard ground in a bucolic setting as he raises the cup to share wine with farmers. The conceit here is that the farmers had been modeled by real farmers of a disputed hacienda in La Castellana, Negros Occidental.

Although the farmer-beneficiaries were installed in the disputed territory in 2007, they were attacked by the security guards of the landowner, Roberto Cuenca, after the military had left. Two of Velasco’s models died.

When he rushed to the scene of the violence, Velasco said he was moved by the farmers’ stoical attitude and optimism. “They had great courage,” he added.

‘I am a heartist’

A former Salesian seminarian, Velasco took up basic education at one of the Salesian fathers’ Don Bosco schools where he learned from the Italian fathers the technique of chiaroscuro, the famous dark-and-light technique of the Italian Renaissance artists. He used light and shadow to highlight the realism of his works.

Because of his penchant for drawing religiously-themed works with social commentary, Velasco had been derided by the general art world as a “fake” and an interloper. But he himself denied he was an artist. “I am a heartist,” he explained.

Much later, Velasco would call himself a “socio-spiritual realist.”

“I view my obras (works) as ‘real,’ not because of the technique but because of the reality happening in our society,” he explained.

“Hapag” became celebrated because the Last Supper is a fixture in every Filipino home’s dining room. Velasco’s work somehow updates the religious genre work, giving it social relevance.

Ironically enough, the work came at a time when there was much furor over the original Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci owing to the novel, “The Da Vinci Code,” by Dan Brown, which was later turned into a movie. The novel fictionalizes the history of the painting and traces it to an underground cult challenging the Church’s interpretation of the Christ figure.

Velasco is survived by his wife, Queenie, and his four children. Today would have been the couple’s 15th wedding anniversary. His remains lie at Funeraria Nacional on Araneta Avenue, Quezon City. Internment will be on 10 a.m., Saturday, at the Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina.