Street scene with buildings

In his early years, Mauro Malang Santos worked as a cartoonist and, under the name of Malang, contributed a long-running cartoon strip to the now-defunct newspaper Manila Chronicles. In the 1950s, he turned to making small tempera paintings illustrating the lives of ordinary people. One subject of these paintings was barong-barong, the makeshift homes often built leaning one against another in the barrios of Manila. Malang painted a series of scenes of street life inspired by the shanties near his workplace. The fragile buildings balance on piles above the ground and maintain a quiet dignity.