Pioneers in Philippine art
October 29, 2006 | 12:00am
Last October 20, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco opened an exhibit of these three painters, billed as "Pioneers of Philippine Art" – this according to the Ayala Museum which sent the exhibition there. The Ayala Museum is owned by the Spanish mestizo Ayala family, one of the richest in Asia and the world.
Juan Luna, Fernando Amorsolo – but of course. And Fernando Zobel de Ayala – certainly not! To put Fernando Zobel de Ayala on the same pedestal as these two Filipino icons is, at the most, dubious, and at the least presumptuous.
And who am I to contradict the Ayalas?
Here are my credentials:
I am an 81-year-old novelist; more than half of my life was spent as a cultural worker hoping that I can contribute even just a bit to the development of Filipino culture which will then give us an indelible identity and that felicitous bonding without which no nation can progress and prevail.
For the past 50 years, I have been lecturing on Philippine culture here and elsewhere, academically at the University of the East, the University of Santo Tomas, De La Salle University, the National University of Singapore and at the University of California in Berkeley.
I have visited most of the major art museums in Asia, the Americas and Europe with the Uffizi as a notable exception because every time I am in Florence, the long lines at the gate always daunted me.
From 1967 to 1977, I operated the Solidaridad Galleries in Malate with the intention of helping our art to acquire a Filipino and Asian face. Aside from demonstrations and lectures, we exhibited the young artists of that generation, Onib Olmedo, Prudencio Lamarrosa, Raul Lebajo, Raul Isidro, Alfredo Roces, Tiny Nuyda, the veterans Nena Saguil, J. Elizalde Navarro, Rodolfo Paras Perez. We also exhibited Malaysia’s most famous painter Ibrahim Hussein, the Japanese print maker Watanabe, Tibetan tangkas, Taiwan’s Fifth Moon Group, painters from Bali, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Korea, folk art from India. A portion of the gallery was devoted to Gilda Cordero Fernando’s Cordillera woodwork, weaving and basketry, Laguna carvings and papier-mâché, Maranao metalwork, and other folk crafts. We even held a one-month no-sale exhibition of the Luis Araneta collection – all of these to give our people a deeper insight into our culture.
I first saw Fernando Zobel’s work in the early ’50s. He had just returned from Harvard. His friend, Telly Albert Zulueta, then editor of the Weekly Women Magazine, a sister publication of the Manila Times where I worked, showed me his black and white drawings. They were original and good. In the’50s and the ’60s, he was a familiar figure at chi-chi cultural events. On many occasions, he visited our bookshop and we had pleasant conversations.
In 1967, I visited the Guggenheim Museum in New York – that landmark edifice designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. I was not so much attracted to the current exhibit as I was by the design of the building until I saw a familiar painting. I told my companion, Larry Stifel, the secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation, that the painter was Filipino.
Larry corrected me. "This is an exhibition of contemporary Spanish art – it is not Asian." I backtracked down the ramp to the beginning of the show; the announcement was, indeed, about a Spanish exhibition.
Back in Manila I immediately called Fernando and told him I saw his work at the Guggenheim. Then I asked, are you Spanish?
He said, yes, he is Spanish.
It was no surprise to me then that soon after, at his expense, he built that museum for modern Spanish art in Cuenca Spain.
The two great religions of Asia, Hinduism and Buddhism – the foundation of the classical traditions in the region did not reach us. Christianity was brought by Spain to the Philippines in 1521. At about the same time, Islam was already a minor presence. We are mostly Christians, with many indigenous traditions.
What, then, is Filipino art?
It is the unfailing depiction of us, our reality, of images we are familiar with, carabaos, our nipa huts and the skyscrapers of our cities, the rancid sweatshops and flamboyant fiestas, our emerald ricefields and majestic mountains, our sunshine and our typhoons. It is the ethereal evocation of Filipino themes. The creation of Filipinos – to be precise about it, by Filipino citizens or by those whose hearts are embedded in this native soil. It is all these, and much, much more which we recognize when we see it, the particular from which the universal begins.
Great art always has nationality. Picasso lived most of his years in Paris – imbibed influences from Africa and elsewhere but it was a Spaniard who painted "Guernica" – that famous mural depicting that doomed Basque town leveled by German bombers during the Spanish civil war.
Nena Saguil (1914-1994) spent years in Paris, but she worked on Philippine themes, as did Romeo Tabuena in exile in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.
Who, then, are our pioneers in Western art? Some unknown painters in the 17th and 18th centuries who did portraits and religious paintings. And in the 19th century, certainly, Juan Luna (1857-1899), Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo (1853-1913); and in the 20th century, Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972) and Carlos V. Francisco (1914-1969). Our first real modernist was Victorio C. Edades (1895-1985) who imbibed the modernist tradition from the United States when he went there, studied in Seattle and was influenced by the French modernists; he went back to Manila, set up the University of Santo Tomas School of Art and Architecture in 1930 and started a controversy with the conservatives at the University of the Philippines. After him followed a host of other modernists: Nena Saguil (1914-1994), Vicente Manasala (1910-1981), Hernando R. Ocampo (1911-1978), Galo B. Ocampo (1913-1983), Jose T. Joya (1931-1996), Arturo Luz, J. Elizalde Navarro (1924-1999), Ang Kiukok (1931-2005). Most were conferred National Artist by a grateful government. As for Fernando Zobel (1924-1984), he was known at the time in Manila art circles but his influence was insignificant.
The Ayalas can be Filipinos not by foisting dubious claims; their Ayala Museum cannot – must not – be the final arbiter of Philippine art. There are many Filipinos who know better and are technically equipped to make infallible conclusions.
The Ayalas obviously want to identify themselves with this country which has made them rich. They can do this by giving a large chunk of their wealth to a philanthropy that will truly develop this country so that our workers, particularly our women, need not labor abroad as housemaids and prostitutes.
The writer is also a recipient of the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Award in Literature, the National Artist Award for Literature in 2001 and the Pablo Neruda Centennial Award in 2004.
Juan Luna, Fernando Amorsolo – but of course. And Fernando Zobel de Ayala – certainly not! To put Fernando Zobel de Ayala on the same pedestal as these two Filipino icons is, at the most, dubious, and at the least presumptuous.
And who am I to contradict the Ayalas?
Here are my credentials:
I am an 81-year-old novelist; more than half of my life was spent as a cultural worker hoping that I can contribute even just a bit to the development of Filipino culture which will then give us an indelible identity and that felicitous bonding without which no nation can progress and prevail.
For the past 50 years, I have been lecturing on Philippine culture here and elsewhere, academically at the University of the East, the University of Santo Tomas, De La Salle University, the National University of Singapore and at the University of California in Berkeley.
I have visited most of the major art museums in Asia, the Americas and Europe with the Uffizi as a notable exception because every time I am in Florence, the long lines at the gate always daunted me.
From 1967 to 1977, I operated the Solidaridad Galleries in Malate with the intention of helping our art to acquire a Filipino and Asian face. Aside from demonstrations and lectures, we exhibited the young artists of that generation, Onib Olmedo, Prudencio Lamarrosa, Raul Lebajo, Raul Isidro, Alfredo Roces, Tiny Nuyda, the veterans Nena Saguil, J. Elizalde Navarro, Rodolfo Paras Perez. We also exhibited Malaysia’s most famous painter Ibrahim Hussein, the Japanese print maker Watanabe, Tibetan tangkas, Taiwan’s Fifth Moon Group, painters from Bali, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Korea, folk art from India. A portion of the gallery was devoted to Gilda Cordero Fernando’s Cordillera woodwork, weaving and basketry, Laguna carvings and papier-mâché, Maranao metalwork, and other folk crafts. We even held a one-month no-sale exhibition of the Luis Araneta collection – all of these to give our people a deeper insight into our culture.
I first saw Fernando Zobel’s work in the early ’50s. He had just returned from Harvard. His friend, Telly Albert Zulueta, then editor of the Weekly Women Magazine, a sister publication of the Manila Times where I worked, showed me his black and white drawings. They were original and good. In the’50s and the ’60s, he was a familiar figure at chi-chi cultural events. On many occasions, he visited our bookshop and we had pleasant conversations.
In 1967, I visited the Guggenheim Museum in New York – that landmark edifice designed by the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. I was not so much attracted to the current exhibit as I was by the design of the building until I saw a familiar painting. I told my companion, Larry Stifel, the secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation, that the painter was Filipino.
Larry corrected me. "This is an exhibition of contemporary Spanish art – it is not Asian." I backtracked down the ramp to the beginning of the show; the announcement was, indeed, about a Spanish exhibition.
Back in Manila I immediately called Fernando and told him I saw his work at the Guggenheim. Then I asked, are you Spanish?
He said, yes, he is Spanish.
It was no surprise to me then that soon after, at his expense, he built that museum for modern Spanish art in Cuenca Spain.
The two great religions of Asia, Hinduism and Buddhism – the foundation of the classical traditions in the region did not reach us. Christianity was brought by Spain to the Philippines in 1521. At about the same time, Islam was already a minor presence. We are mostly Christians, with many indigenous traditions.
What, then, is Filipino art?
It is the unfailing depiction of us, our reality, of images we are familiar with, carabaos, our nipa huts and the skyscrapers of our cities, the rancid sweatshops and flamboyant fiestas, our emerald ricefields and majestic mountains, our sunshine and our typhoons. It is the ethereal evocation of Filipino themes. The creation of Filipinos – to be precise about it, by Filipino citizens or by those whose hearts are embedded in this native soil. It is all these, and much, much more which we recognize when we see it, the particular from which the universal begins.
Great art always has nationality. Picasso lived most of his years in Paris – imbibed influences from Africa and elsewhere but it was a Spaniard who painted "Guernica" – that famous mural depicting that doomed Basque town leveled by German bombers during the Spanish civil war.
Nena Saguil (1914-1994) spent years in Paris, but she worked on Philippine themes, as did Romeo Tabuena in exile in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico.
Who, then, are our pioneers in Western art? Some unknown painters in the 17th and 18th centuries who did portraits and religious paintings. And in the 19th century, certainly, Juan Luna (1857-1899), Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo (1853-1913); and in the 20th century, Fernando Amorsolo (1892-1972) and Carlos V. Francisco (1914-1969). Our first real modernist was Victorio C. Edades (1895-1985) who imbibed the modernist tradition from the United States when he went there, studied in Seattle and was influenced by the French modernists; he went back to Manila, set up the University of Santo Tomas School of Art and Architecture in 1930 and started a controversy with the conservatives at the University of the Philippines. After him followed a host of other modernists: Nena Saguil (1914-1994), Vicente Manasala (1910-1981), Hernando R. Ocampo (1911-1978), Galo B. Ocampo (1913-1983), Jose T. Joya (1931-1996), Arturo Luz, J. Elizalde Navarro (1924-1999), Ang Kiukok (1931-2005). Most were conferred National Artist by a grateful government. As for Fernando Zobel (1924-1984), he was known at the time in Manila art circles but his influence was insignificant.
The Ayalas can be Filipinos not by foisting dubious claims; their Ayala Museum cannot – must not – be the final arbiter of Philippine art. There are many Filipinos who know better and are technically equipped to make infallible conclusions.
The Ayalas obviously want to identify themselves with this country which has made them rich. They can do this by giving a large chunk of their wealth to a philanthropy that will truly develop this country so that our workers, particularly our women, need not labor abroad as housemaids and prostitutes.
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