Books

SYM The Power of Struggle
Painter-teacher Sofronio Ylanan Mendoza (SYM) is the founder of a school of artists known as the Dimasalang Groups I (1968) and II (1970s) in Manila, Philippines. A decade later in the 1980s, he founded Dimasalang III in Canada.
Born of humble folk in the island of Cebu in the Philippines, SYM pursued his love for painting in the proletarian districts of post-war Manila, the capital city of the nation, eking out a living by taking whatever painting jobs came his way–commercial signs, billboards–as well as selling his paintings in the popular art shops along Mabini Street in the Ermita district of Manila.
SYM bagged the First Prize in an On-the-spot Painting Competition sponsored by Shell Oil Company in 1967 and quickly established himself as a Figurative painter.
SYM migrated to Vancouver, Canada in 1981 where he soon found his niche as an artist and art teacher. Twenty years later in 2001, SYM moved away from the highly Figurative work strongly influenced by the French Impressionists, to a fragmented form that painter Vicente Manansala referred to as "Transparent Cubism".
This book features SYM's best work, from his earliest years to the present. It is an incisive monograph on SYM enriched by visuals of his important paintings including those owned by collectors in the Philippines and Canada who were traced through extensive research.