National Artist for Sculpture (1973) of Philippine Muslim art and culture.
Through his works, the indigenous
(July 24, 1890 July 12, 1976)
Guillermo Estrella Tolentino is a product of the Revival period in Philippine
art. Returning from Europe (where he was enrolled at the Royal Academy of
Fine Arts, Rome) in 1925, he was appointed as professor at the UP School
of Fine Arts where the idea also of executing a monument for national heroes
struck him. The result was the UP Oblation that became the symbol of
freedom at the campus. Acknowledged as his masterpiece and completed in
1933, The Bonifacio Monument in Caloocan stands as an enduring symbol
of the Filipinos cry for freedom.
Bonifacio Monument
Other works include the bronze figures of President Quezon at Quezon
Memorial, life-size busts of Jose Rizalat UP and UE, marble statue
of Ramon Magsaysay in GSIS Building; granolithics of heroic statues
representing education, medicine, forestry, veterinary science, fine arts and
music at UP. He also designed the gold and bronze medals for the Ramon
Magsaysay Award and did the seal of the Republic of the Philippines.
National Artist for Visual Arts (2014)
(January 29, 1919 September 1, 1998)
Francisco Coching, acknowledged as the Dean of Filipino Illustrators and
son of noted Tagalog novelist and comics illustrator Gregorio Coching, was
a master storyteller in images and in print. His illustrations and novels
were products of that happy combination of fertile imagination, a love of
storytelling, and fine draftsmanship. He synthesized images and stories
informing Philippine folk and popular imagination of culture. His career
spanned four decades.
Starting his career in 1934, he was a central force in the formation of the
popular art form of comics. He was a part of the golden age of the Filipino
comics in the 50s and 60s. Until his early retirement in 1973, Coching
mesmerized the comics-reading public as well as his fellow artists,
cartoonists and writers.
The source of his imagery can be traced to the Philippine culture from the
19th century to the 1960s. His works reflected the dynamics brought about
by the racial and class conflict in Philippine colonial society in the 19th
century, a theme that continued to be dealt with for a long time in Philippine
cinema. He valorized the indigenous, untrammeled Filipino in Lapu-
Lapu and Sagisag ng Lahing Pilipino, and created the types that affirm the
native sense of self in his Malay heroes of stunning physique. His women
are beautiful and gentle, but at the same time can be warrior-like, as
in Marabini (Marahas na Binibini) or the strong seductive, modern women of
his comics in the 50s and 60s.
There is myth and fantasy, too, featuring the grotesque characters, vampire
bats, shriveled witches, as in Haring Ulopong. Yet, Coching grounded his
works too in the experience of war during the Japanese occupation, he was
a guerilla of the Kamagong Unit, Las Pinas branch of the ROTC hunters in
the Philippines. He also drew from the popular post-war culture of the 50s,
as seen in Movie Fan. At this point, his settings and characters became
more urbane, and the narratives he weaved scanned the changing times
and mores, as in Pusakal, Talipandas, Gigolo, and Maldita.
In his characters and storylines, Coching brings to popular consciousness
the issues concerning race and identity. He also discussed in his works the
concept of the hero, which resonate through the characters on his comics
like in Dimasalang and El Vibora.
He also left a lasting influence on the succeeding generations of younger
cartoonist such as Larry Alcala, Ben Infante and Nestor Redondo. The
comics as popular art also helped forge the practice and consciousness as
a national language.
National Artist for Visual Arts (2006)
(January 14, 1936 December 16, 2014)
Abdulmari Asia Imao, a native of Sulu, is a sculptor, painter, photographer,
ceramist, documentary film maker, cultural researcher, writer, and articulator
ukkil, sarimanok and naga motifs have been popularized and instilled in the
consciousness of the Filipino nation and other peoples as original Filipino
creations.
His U.P. art education introduced him to Filipino masters like Guillermo
Tolentino and Napoleon Abueva, who were among his mentors. With his
large-scale sculptures and monuments of Muslim and regional heroes and
leaders gracing selected sites from Batanes to Tawi-tawi, Imao has helped
develop among cultural groups trust and confidence necessary for the
building of a more just and humane society.
Selected works:
Industry Brass Mural, Philippine National Bank, San Fernando, La Union
Mural Relief on Filmmaking, Manila City Hall
Industrial Mural, Central Bank of the Philippines, San Fernando, La Union
Sulu Warriors (statues of Panglima Unaid and Captain Abdurahim Imao), 6
ft., Sulu Provincial Capitol
National Artist for Visual Arts (2006)
Benedicto R. Cabrera, *who signs his paintings Bencab, upheld the
primacy of drawing over the decorative color. Bencab started his career in
the mid-sixties as a lyrical expressionist. His solitary figures of scavengers
emerging from a dark landscape were piercing stabs at the social
conscience of a people long inured to poverty and dereliction. Bencab, who
was born in Malabon, has christened the emblematic scavenger figure
Sabel. For Bencab, Sabel is a melancholic symbol of dislocation, despair
and isolationthe personification of human dignity threatened by lifes
vicissitudes, and the vast inequities of Philippine society. Bencabs
exploration of form, finding his way out of the late neo-realism and high
abstraction of the sixties to be able to reconsider the potency of figurative
expression had held out vital options for Philippine art in the Martial Law
years in the seventies through the contemporary era.
*from the citation
Selected works
Madonna with Objects, 1991
Studies of Sabel, dyptych, 1991
People Waiting, 1989
The Indifference, 1988
Waiting for the Monsoon, 1986
Philippine landscapes, such as green rice paddies and golden fields of
harvest. His use of rice paper in collages placed value on transparency, a
common characteristic of folk art. The curvilinear forms of his paintings often
recall the colorful and multilayered kiping of the Pahiyas festival. His
important mandala series was also drawn from Asian aesthetic forms and
concepts.
He espoused the value of kinetic energy and spontaneity in painting which
became significant artistic values in Philippine art. His paintings clearly
show his mastery of gestural paintings where paint is applied intuitively and
spontaneously, in broad brush strokes, using brushes or spatula or is
directly squeezed from the tube and splashed across the canvas. His 1958
landmark painting Granadean Arabesque,a work on canvas big enough to
be called a mural, features swipes and gobs of impasto and sand. The
choice of Joya to represent the Philippines in the 1964 Venice Biennial itself
represents a high peak in the rise of the modern art in the country.
Granadean Arabesque, 1958 (Ateneo Art Gallery Collection)
Joya also led the way for younger artists in bringing out the potentials of
multimedia. He designed and painted on ceramic vessels, plates and tiles,
and stimulated regional workshops. He also did work in the graphic arts,
particularly in printmaking. His legacy is undeniably a large body of work of
consistent excellence which has won the admiration of artists both in the
local and international scene. Among them are his compositions Beethoven
Listening to the Blues, and Space Transfiguration, and other works
like Hills of Nikko, Abstraction, Dimension of
Fear, Naiad, Torogan, Cityscape.