Manalad’s murals on Philippines’ past

History painting has a long history. By the time the French were satiated with the fêtes galantes and nature morts in the late 1700s, Jacques Louis David emerged in the scene to resurrect painting of gallant themes culled from history and mythology like the Oath of Horatii and the Death of Socrates, to cite but two.

In 18th century Europe, history art per se was stylistically associated with, but not identical to, the grande manière. It was the preferred idiom of academic artists who regarded it as the highest expression of art. The grand manner was seen as the natural vehicle for the lofty themes of history painting, where the particular and the individual became subordinated to the general effect.

Behind history painting, or for that matter, academic painting, or painting which portrayed in the grand manner subjects drawn from classical antiquity or the Bible, dwelt the idea that the means suited the end, and that important painting (which academic art was by definition) demanded exceptional ability exercised with restraint and understanding.

The training of an artist aspiring for a career as history painter in the past was highly discriminatory. The way to succeed was through membership in the Academy. In France, the artist submitted a work to gain provisional admission to the Academy with the status of an agrée. He was then required to submit within a reasonable time a reception piece, the acceptance of which entitled him as a reçu or as a member of the Academy. Though the Academy included members in such categories as genre painter, portraitist and landscape painter, all of the higher officers of the institution – recteur, directeur – were history painters or sculptors.

That some artworks are accorded more importance than others because of the subject they convey is admittedly alien to contemporary thinking. During the middle of the 19th century, however, the hierarchy had real force in Europe. The French academicians classified painting beginning at the bottom with still life (inanimate objects), moving through animals to genre (peopled, but only by peasants) and landscape to portraits (for the most part of sitters of some social standing) and from there to religious and history painting. The last two were the most important categories because they encompassed all other genres. While the genre painter could only paint one kind of scene, the history painter was a landscape/genre/still-life painter all rolled into one; all these skills were requisites to represent the dramatic narrative of history.

A similar hierarchical system was adapted in the Philippines with the establishment of the Manila Art Academy in the 19th century. Although reminiscent of the French Academy, it was patterned after the Spanish academic tradition.

History painting was accorded the highest recognition. Students in the academia were required to submit works every year in their four-year residence in the institution. For the first two years, they were obliged to send a drawing copied from an old masterpiece, another drawing from life, and a colored study in half-size also from life. For their third year, the students submitted original compositions in the form of a painting or drawing. In their last year, they presented original historical canvases of two to three figures in half-size. The latter was evidently "the reigning obsession of the academicians."

When Lorenzo Icaza Rocha (1837-1898) exhibited El Sueño de Don Ramiro en la Batalla de Clavijo at the National Exposition of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1867, he won an honorable mention. The painting was acquired by Her Majesty. Since then, the work served as a yardstick for the works of younger artists in the country.

Rocha later became the director of the academia from 1893 to 1898, when it was officially called the Escuela Superior de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado, prior to its "agonizingly slow transition to the School of Fine Arts of the University of the Philippines when it was inaugurated in 1909." Rafael Villanueva Enriquez (1850-1937) became its first director from 1909 to 1927.

It was in this milieu that many Filipino artists honed their skills and tempered their ideas on their way to becoming exponents of history art in the country. The heyday of history art harvested works done by the stalwarts that included Fernando Amorsolo, Carlos Francisco, Vicente Manansala, Vicente Dizon and Dominador Castañeda, to mention a few. Before them was the generation of Juan Luna and Félix Resurrección Hidalgo. After awhile, history art graced book and periodical illustrations. Easily one of the noteworthy practitioners of this genre was Amadeo Yabut Manalad.

Manalad, born in 1911 in Bautista, Pangasinan, started drawing at age four when he saw his uncle drawing silhouettes and portraits. Manalad, however, was more fascinated with the way the human figures were drawn in Biblical stories. He was charmed by European figures, especially the likes of Julius Caesar and other Roman characters. He admitted that he was already history-conscious when he was barely 6 years old. When watching Roman and other costume pictures at Legarda, he would force himself to memorize the costumes so he could draw them later on.

At 18, he enrolled at the UP School of Fine Arts, where he had Francisco as classmate. The two would become rivals in class, both getting the highest grade of 1. Within a year, he and Botong were promoted to the next level, along with two others in a class of 45. The teachers in school then counted on such luminaries as Fabian de la Rosa, Guillermo Tolentino, Vicente Rivera y Mir and the Amorsolo brothers – Fernando and Pablo, among others.

Since 1930, Manalad filled canvases and the city’s empty walls with scenes from both Philippine history and legend. Although he had done landscapes and seascapes, history had always been his favorite subject simply because of the challenge for historical accuracy.

For visual feel, Manalad had to be particularly imaginative and creatively dependent on text rather than on models. There were times when he would involve himself in the era he was painting. Because of his extensive readings in history, Manalad had an arsenal of historical anecdotes that would captivate local historians, none of whom he knew personally.

Prior to the war, he helped National Artist Victorio C. Edades on several mural projects. By liberation, Manansala assisted him for the Old Life Theatre mural and for the US Army’s PX store mural, a huge symbolic rendition of "Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao" and "Mother Earth." In the 1950s, he would help Botong undertake research on details of Lapu-Lapu’s shield or Magellan’s armor and helmet.

During the war years, Manalad illustrated for Philippine Herald Mid-Week magazine, Liwayway, and Kislap Graphic. Post war, he got into the pages of pioneering history books – Philippine Saga (1946) and Tadhana (1974). Both were later serialized in major dailies.

He spent almost 15 years as art director for the Philippine Advertising Counselors (PAC). In 1968, E. Aguilar Cruz and Malang introduced him to the country’s foremost art patron – First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos. Six years later, he completed two murals for the Heroes Hall in Malacañang. Since the 1986 EDSA Revolution, the two murals have yet to be accounted for.

The one big boom in his career as an artist came in 1980 when at 69, he had his first one-man show at Rustan’s Galerie Blue under the First Lady’s sponsorship.

Manalad’s only existing work in grand scale was the mural he did in 1976 limning the history of the Bulacan province. It measures approximately 9.75 x 34.13 meters done in oil on marine plywood.

The mural was a donation of the Lakan Sining of Bulacan, an aggrupation of painters, sculptors and other artists in the province, to the provincial government.

Lakan Sining was officially organized in 1975. During the group’s initial years, it had a membership of more than a hundred, enough manpower to realize a huge project like the Capitol Mural, as it was then known.

The concept for the mural, including its composition and iconography, came from Manalad, hence his bold signature is found in the work. Initially, the idea was to merely paint decorative patterns and motifs directly on the concrete wall of the Provincial Capitol, but after consultations with the Lakan Sining, it evolved into a full-blown historical mural.

Sentimental and novella-ish themes were popular in the 19th century Salon narrative painting in Europe. The painters invariably employed a window-onto-the-world structure (as if the beholder were seated in a theater), with the accent on legibility, academic, handling of paint and an attention to circumstantial detail. This influence can be gleaned in Manalad’s mural which employed succinctly the fluid device of narrative painting in presenting historical events and related themes.

The mural comes in three projections, almost like a triptych, the first panel showing the province’s cultural and economic development from the pre-historic period, the central panel the historical aspect including the famous personages that the province has produced from Marcelo H. del Pilar to Nicanor Abelardo, and the third panel the political life of the people focusing largely on the strides achieved in the province during the term of Governor Narciso Santiago.

The mural manifests in handsome terms Manalad’s mastery of figuration. His style is distinct in that the manner by which he presented his human forms proceeds from a lyrical plane, almost Raphaelite in élan. Even the compositional blocking of figures is nothing theatrical or conscious to create an effect as is wont in works of this kind. The events freely flow from one to another, only to be emphasized, by magnifying the size of a figure here and there to signify a new episode being narrated. The device finds affinity with what was used at the Column of Trajan during the time of Imperial Rome.

The mural was installed at the Provincial Capitol in August 1976 during the incumbency of Governor Santiago. It stayed in situ for 15 years. In 1991, it was dismounted piece by piece upon orders from the new Provincial Governor, Roberto Pagdanganan, to give way to the Provincial Capitol’s further development and renovation.

At present, the mural can be viewed at the Hiyas ng Bulakan Museum at the Nicanor Abelardo Hall in Malolos, Bulacan.

It is difficult to fathom why Manalad’s great and ample artistic talent gained relatively so little recognition. The Cultural Center of the Philippines even denied him the privilege to be included in the CCP Encyclopedia of Arts published in 1994.

Manalad was a painter with a rare and acute sense of history. His murals were well researched for historical authenticity. His sense of history, in fact, came from the history of his own family, and which he imbibed early on in his formative years. When Emilio Aguinaldo retreated to Pangasinan, the Manalad family joined the general and eventually settled in the place for some handsome years.

It is unfortunate that the art form that Manalad opted to embrace in the artistic path that he pursued during his lifetime was unkind to him. Today, Manalad, long deceased for 19 years, is almost totally forgotten.

History artists in contemporary times are vanishing breeds. In the case of Manalad, his contribution to the discipline of history art is left unheralded. It comes, therefore, as a fresh breath of relief that a publishing house – the Kalayaan Publishing – has taken the intrepid step to honor Manalad via a book to be launched on Thursday, Oct. 2, at the Sinagtala ballroom of Ilustrado in Intramuros.

Entitled Amadeo Y. Manalad: History’s Muralist and authored by Amadís Ma. Guerrero, it presents the range and depth of Manalad’s art. As acknowledged in the introductory essay written by Patrick D. Flores, "Manalad’s artistic contributions to the vocabulary of historical illustration and muralist aesthetics deserve study as these lead us to the iconographic representation of history in popular culture and consciousness and the ideology of commemoration of governments and their custodians as these are circulated in reprographic media through national channels. Some of his works had been lost to the elements; others simply cannot be tracked. His is a form of modernity that illumines issues intertwined with the visualization, and hopefully the revision, of the symptoms of nation: its State, its history, its symbols and ceremonies, and its potentates. Like the artist, these have to be made visible.

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