Cézanne the artist

Paul Cézanne  was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic Endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th-century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. Both Matisse and Picasso are said to have remarked that Cézanne "is the father of us all."

Cézanne's often repetitive, exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable. He used planes of colour and small brushstrokes that build up to form complex fields. The paintings convey Cézanne's intense study of his subjects.

In Paris, Cézanne met the Impressionist Camille Pissarro. Initially the friendship formed in the mid-1860s between Pissarro and Cézanne was that of master and disciple, in which Pissarro exerted a formative influence on the younger artist. Over the course of the following decade their landscape painting excursions together, in Louveciennes and Pontoise, led to a collaborative working relationship between equals.

Cézanne's early work is often concerned with the figure in the landscape and includes many paintings of groups of large, heavy figures in the landscape, imaginatively painted. Later in his career, he became more interested in working from direct observation and gradually developed a light, airy painting style. Nevertheless, in Cézanne's mature work there is the development of a solidified, almost architectural style of painting. Throughout his life he struggled to develop an authentic observation of the seen world by the most accurate method of representing it in paint that he could find. To this end, he structurally ordered whatever he perceived into simple forms and colour planes. His statement "I want to make of impressionism something solid and lasting like the art in the museums",[14] and his contention that he was recreating Poussin "after nature" underscored his desire to unite observation of nature with the permanence of classical composition.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted. His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still.

Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.  Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art

Cesar Legaspi

Cesar Legaspi on April 2, 1917 in Tondo, Manila (1917–1994) is a Filipino National Artist awardee in painting. He

was also an art director prior to going full-time in his visual art practice in the 1960s. His early (1940s-1960s) works,

alongside those of peer, Hernando Ocampo are described as depictions of anguish and dehumanization of beggars

and laborers in the city. These include Man and Woman (alternatively known as Beggars) and Gadgets'. Primarily

because of this early period, critics have further cited Legaspi's having "reconstituted" in his paintings "cubism's

unfeeling, geometric ordering of figures into a social expressionism rendered by interacting forms filled with

rhythmic movement".[1]

Early life

Legaspi was born to Manuel Legaspi and Rosario Torrente in Tondo, Manila. He took up painting for one term at the

University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts before he decided to take commercial art courses instead. There he

received medals for perspective and illustration projects. He earned his Certificate of Proficiency in 1936, after

which he continued his education in art under Pablo Amorsolo. He went to Madrid in 1953 and pursued Art Studies

under a scholarship at the Cultura Hispanic until 1954. He also went to Paris to study at the Academie Ranson for

one month under Henri Goetz. Back in the Philippines, he had his first one-man show at the Luz Gallery in 1963.

While this led to an active phase with his major pieces, he also worked as a magazine illustrator and artistic director

at an advertising agency. He finally left the agency in 1968 to focus on his painting

VICENTE MANANSALA

Vicente Silva Manansala (January 22, 1910 - August 22, 1981) was a Filipino cubist painter and illustrator.[1]

Manansala was born in Macabebe, Pampanga. From 1926 to 1930, he studied at the U.P. School of Fine Arts. In 1949, Manansala received a six-month grant by UNESCO to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Banff and Montreal, Canada. In 1950, he received a nine-month scholarship to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris by the French government.[1]

Marker (Macabebe, PampangaTown hall.

Manansala's canvases were described as masterpieces that brought the cultures of the barrio and the city together. His Madonna of the Slums is a portrayal of a mother and child from the countryside who became urban shanty residents once in the city. In hisJeepneys, Manansala combined the elements of provincial folk culture with the congestion issues of the city.[1]

Manansala developed transparent cubism, wherein the "delicate tones, shapes, and patterns of figure and environment are masterfully superimposed". A fine example of Manansala using this "transparent and translucent" technique is his composition, Kalabaw(Carabao).[1]

Vicente Manansala, a National Artist of the Philippines in Visual Arts, was a direct influence to his fellow Filipino neo-realists: Malang, Angelito Antonio, Norma Belleza and Baldemor.[1] The Honolulu Museum of Art, the Lopez Memorial Museum (Manila), the Philippine Center (New York City), the Singapore Art Museum and Holy Angel University (Angeles City, Philippines) are among the public collections holding work by Vicente Manansala. Holy Angel University recently opened a section of its museum called The Vicente Manansala Collection, holding most of the estate left by the artist.

He died on August 22, 1981 in Manila, Philippines due to cancer.

ARTURO LUZ

Arturo Rogerio Luz (born November 20, 1926) is a Philippine National Artist awardee in visual arts. He is also a known printmaker,sculptor, designer and art administrator. A founding member of the modern Neo-realist school in Philippine art, he received the National Artist Award, the country's highest accolade in the arts, in 1997.[1]

Luz has produced art pieces through a disciplined economy of means. His early drawings were described as "playful linear works" influenced by Paul Klee. His best masterpieces are minimalist, geometric abstracts, alluding to the modernist "virtues" of competence, order and elegance; and were further described as evoking universal reality and mirrors an aspiration for an acme of true Asian modernity.[

Hernando R. Ocampo (April 28, 1911 – December 28, 1978) is a Filipino National Artist in the visual arts. He is also fictionist, aplaywright and editor.[1]

Profile of the Artist[edit]

Hernando Ruiz Ocampo was a leading radical modernist artist in the Philippines. He was a member of the Saturday Group of artists (also known as the Taza de Oro Group), and was one of the pre-war Thirteen Moderns, a group of modernist artists founded by Victorio C. Edades in 1938. Famously known for his triumvirate of with neo-realists Vicente S. Manansala and Cesar Legaspi, his works reflected the harsh realities of his country after the Second World War. However, many of his works depicted lush sceneries and the beautiful Philippine landscapes through his skillful use of fierce and bold colors.[2]

H. R. Ocampo was credited for inventing a new mode of abstraction that exemplifies Philippine flora and fauna, and portrays sunshine, stars and rain. Using movement and bold colors, Ocampo utilized fantasy and science fiction as the basis for his works. His art is described to be "abstract compositions of biological forms that seemed to oscillate, quiver, inflame and multiply" like mutations. His A Wiping (1974, oil on canvas, 30 inches x 40 inches) is a flat rendition of a style that Ocampo himself revealed to be a representation of "visual melody".[1]

Ocampo was born in Santa Cruz, Manila, but later transferred to Maypajo, Caloocan. His parents were Emilio Ocampo y Saltiero and Delfina Ruiz y Santo. He originally studied law, commerce and creative writing, and worked as a writer before he taught himself the visual arts. During his career as a writer, he was one of the organizers of Veronicans, a young group of progressive and prolific writers. He worked in various periodicals such as Taliba newspaper and Manila Sunday Chronicle magazine. He also worked as a scriptwriter and director for television, and produced and directed for the Filipino Players Guild.[2]

His works as a writer includes "Don’t Cry, Don’t Fret" in poetry; "Ikalawang Pagdalaw," "Unang Pamumulaklak," "Rice and Bullets," and "Bakia" in fiction; and "Buntot Page," a screenplay written with Mario David.

His major works in the visual arts include Ina ng Balon, Calvary, Slum Dwellers, Nude with Candle and Flower, Man and Carabao, Angel's Kiss, Palayok at Kalan, Ancestors, Isda at Mangga, The Resurrection, Fifty-three "Q," Back drop, Fiesta, Mother and Child, Easter Sunday, and his most acknowledged work Genesis, which served as the basis

of curtain design in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Main Theater. His works were exhibited in Washington, New York, London, and Tokyo, among others.[3]

Awards received include: Republic Cultural Award in 1965; Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award in 1969; Diwa ng Lahi Award in 1976; and Gawad CCP para sa Sining Award in 1979.[2]

Famous for his work "We or They"

MAURO MALANG SANTOS

 

SANTOS, MAURO MALANG aka Malang b. Santa Cruz, Manila 20 Jan 1928. Painter. He is the son of Dan

Santos and Juliana Malang. He is married to Mary San Pedro. They have four children, two of whom are

painters-Stevesantos and Soler Santos. At the age of 10 he studied drawing under Teodoro Buenaventura.

When he was 19 he decided to stop schooling and joined the staff of the Manila Chronicle art department under

noted cartoonist Liborio (Gat) Gatbonton. He created for the evening Chronicle the country's first English

daily comic strip Kosme, the Cop, Retired. In 1955 he set up together with Gat, Larry Alcala, Hugo Yonzon,

and Elmer Agustan the only gallery specializing in cartoons called the Bughouse. In 1972 he studied at the Otis

Art Institute under a special grant. Malang was first known as a cartoonist before he became a renowned

painter. Among his works is Barrio Fiesta, an oil on canvas measuring 12.7 x 40.16 cm which was

commissioned in 1958 by the Ayala Corp for the FGU-Insular Life Building.

 

In 1966 together with other prominent painters, Malang launched "Art for the Masses," which allowed art,

through reasonably priced prints, to be made available to a wider audience.

 

In 1957 Malang was included in the list of "Twelve Artists in the Philippines-Who's Who" by Lyd Arguilla,

founder of the Philippine Art Gallery. The following year he received the Award for Editorial Design from the

Art Directors Guild of the Philippines. He has consistently won in the competitions held by the Society of

Philippine Illustrators and Cartoonists, which named him artist of the year in 1964.

 

Malang won awards in the Art Association of the Philippines annual art competition: second prize, Street

Fight, 1951, third prize, Traffic, 1953; honorable mention, The Yellow Sky, 1959; second prize, Quarter

Moon; and an honorable mention for Gate to Intramuros, 1963. He was a Ten Outstanding Young Men of the

Philippines awardee also in 1963. He received the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan from the City of Manila in 1981.

.

Victorio C. Edades (December 13, 1895 – March 7, 1985) is a Filipino painter who was the leader of the revolutionary Thirteen Moderns who engaged their classical compatriots in heated debate over the nature and function of art. He was named a National Artistin 1976.Victorio Edades was born on December 13, 1895 to Hilario and Cecilia Edades. He was the youngest of ten children (six of whom died of smallpox). He grew up in Barrio Bolosan in Dagupan, Pangasinan. His artistic ability surfaced during his early years. By seventh grade, his teachers were so impressed with him that he was dubbed "apprentice teacher" in his art class. He was also an achiever from the very beginning, having won awards in school debates and writing competitions.

After high school, Edades and his friends traveled to the United States. Before enrolling in Seattle, Edades incidentally made a detour to Alaska and experienced working in a couple of factories. Nonetheless, he moved on to Seattle and enrolled at the University of Washington where he took up architecture and later earned a Master of Fine Arts in Painting. The significant event that stirred Edades, and made him as what he is known now, was his

encounter with the traveling exhibition from the New York Armory Hall. This art show presented modern European artists such as Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso and the Surrealists. His growing appreciation to what he saw veered him away from the conservative academic art and Realistic schools and thus he began to paint in the modern manner. The two former schools of thought were inclined more towards idyllic subject matter, and require a mastery of refined detailing. What attracted Edades to the modernist movement was its principle to go beyond the idealistic exteriors propagated by Impressionism and Realism. Modernist thought encourages experimentation in artistic expression and allows the artist to present reality as he sees it in his own way.

"Fontainebleau, August 1937" by Victorio Edades, Philippine National Artist. Painted in Fontainebleau, France in the summer of 1937 when he completed his formal studies in watercolor painting. In addition to being a historic painting, it depicts the influences of the French modernists on his works, particularlyPaul Gauguin's Symbolism. Victorio Edades is the Father of Modernism in Philippine art. Private collection, New York, USA

During his journey to America, he participated in art competitions, one of which was the Annual Exhibition of North American Artists. His entry The Sketch (1927) won second prize. When he returned to the Philippines in 1928, he saw that the state of art was "practically dead." Paintings he saw dealt with similar themes and were done in a limited technique that mostly followed the works ofFernando Amorsolo, the first Philippine national artist and the most popular painter of the time. He recognized that there was no creativity whatsoever, and that the artists of that time were merely "copying" each other. So in December, Edades bravely mounted a one-man show at the Philippine Columbia Club in Ermita to introduce to the masses what his modern art was all about. He showed thirty paintings, including those that won acclaim in America. It was a distinguished exhibit, for the Filipino art circle was suddenly shaken by what this young man from Pangasinan had learned from his studies abroad. Viewers and critics were apparently shocked and not one painting was sold.

Edades helped organized the University of Sto. Tomas Department of Architecture in 1930 and was its acting head. In 1935, he was appointed as Director of the UST College of Architecture and Fine Arts, which he organized under the wing of Architecture. He was guided by the existing American curricula when he made the Fine Arts curriculum for UST. Alongside standard subjects like drawing, painting and composition, he also included Western and Oriental art history, foreign languages and optional science subjects such as zoology and botany. Because of Edades, UST became the forerunner of Modern Art, while the University of the Philippines remained the precursor of conservative art.

By 1938, he opened up the Atelier of Modern Art at the M. H. Del Pilar, Manila together with Diosdado Lorenzo and Galo Ocampo. He also organized the School of Design with Juan Nakpil in 1940.

While espousing his beliefs and ideas on Modern Art, Edades sparked a debate between modern and academic (classical) art. The Herald Mid-Week Magazine, Sunday Times Magazine and This Week contained the issues addressed by him and Guillermo Tolentino, who spoke up for the side of the Conservatives. Another development in the art scene, which was spearheaded by Edades, was the formation of the "Thirteen Moderns." The list included Edades, Carlos Francisco, Galo Ocampo, Lorenzo, Vicente Manansala, HR Ocampo, Anita Magasaysay, Cesar Legaspi, Demetrio Diego, Ricarte Puruganan, Jose Pardo, Bonifacio Cristobal and Arsenio Capili. Coming up with this list was an attempt to form a cohesive unit of artists who were in search of a modern style. Other achievements by Edades included him receiving the Pro Partia award during the Rizal Centennial Celebration in 1961. In 1964, Edades was given the Araw ng Maynila Award in Painting. In 1976, he was conferred the National Artist Award in Painting. On February 12, 1977, UST conferred on Edades the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts, Honoris Causa.

Edades retired to Davao City with his family. There he taught for a time at the Philippine Women's College and resumed his career as an artist. He died on March 7, 1985.

ROMEO V. TABUENA

 

TABUENA, ROMEO V. b. Iloilo city 22 Aug 1921. Painter. Tabuena studied fine arts at the University of the

Philippines (UP). He also studied at the Art Student League in New York, USA, in 1952 and at the Academie

de la Grande Chaumiere in France in 1954.

 

One of the neorealist, he began his career with several exhibits of drawings and watercolors at the Philippine

Art Gallery in 1949. He is best known for his Watercolors, at times in a vertical format influenced by Chinese

Painting. These near-monochromatic watercolor landscapes of nipa huts, farmers, and carabaos are done in an

exquisite style, with attenuated figures spread out in large tonal areas suggesting early morning fog.

 

Tabuena had another side to his art, and this was expressed in dark oil paintings, some of which seemed to

reflect the "proletarian" concerns of the period, as in Coal Gatherers. Here the figures are short, and and squat,

with expressionist distortion and no bright colors to relieve the heavy atmosphere. He approaches

expressionism, especially in such a work as Childbirth, in which the pangs of childbirth are expressed in

elongated figures and dramatic lighting which hints of fears of mythological beings. A later series consists of

heads done in a monochromatic style with cubist influence, their jagged, angular features suggesting years of

toil and arduous struggle.

 

When Tabuena settled in Mexico, he developed a colorful, prismatic style with folk subjects, including street

sweepers, candle vendors, guards, and laundry women.

 

Tabuena won awards from the Art Association of the Philippines: second prize, Agnus Dei (Lamb of God),

1949, and honorable mention, Black Christ, 1952.

Carlos Modesto Villaluz Francisco[2] (November 4, 1912 – March 31, 1969), popularly known as Botong, was a muralist fromAngono, Rizal.

Early life and career[edit]

Francisco was a most distinguished practitioner of mural painting for many decades and best known for his

historical pieces. He was one of the first Filipino modernists along with Galo Ocampo and Victorio C. Edades who

broke away from Fernando Amorsolo'sromanticism of Philippine scenes. According to restorer Helmuth Josef Zotter,

Francisco's art "is a prime example of linear painting where lines and contours appear like cutouts."[3]

His great works include Blood Compact, First Mass at Limasawa, The Martyrdom of Rizal, Bayanihan, Magpupukot,

Fiesta, Bayanihan sa Bukid, Sandugo, Portrait of Purita, The Invasion of Limahong, Serenade, and Muslim Betrothal.

Some of his murals have suffered damage over the years. The "Pageant of Commerce" emerged from several years

of restoration in 2000.[3] His murals in the lobby of the Philippine General Hospital were restored for the 3rd time in

2007.[4]

He was also responsible for the discovery of the now famous Angono Petroglyphs in 1965. He was also involved in

Costume Design inPhilippine cinema.

Juan Luna y Novicio (October 23, 1857 – December 7, 1899) was a Filipino painter, sculptor and a political activist of thePhilippine Revolution during the late 19th century. He became one of the first recognized Philippine artists.

His winning the gold medal in the 1884 Madrid Exposition of Fine Arts, along with the silver win of fellow Filipino painterFélix Resurrección Hidalgo, prompted a celebration which was a major highlight in the memoirs of members of thePropaganda Movement, with the fellow Ilustrados toasting to the two painters' good health and to the brotherhood between Spain and the Philippines.

Regarded for work done in the manner of the Spanish, Italian and French academies of his time, Luna painted literary and historical scenes, some with an underscore of political commentary. His allegorical works were inspired with classical balance, and often showed figures in theatrical poses.

In 1883 Luna started the painting demanded of him by the Ayuntamiento. In May 1884, he shipped the large canvas of theSpoliarium to Madrid for the year's Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes. He was the first recipient of the three gold medals awarded in the exhibition and Luna gained recognition among the connoisseurs and art critics present. On June 25, 1884, Filipino and Spanish nobles organized an event celebrating Luna's win in the exhibition. That evening, Rizal prepared a speech for his friend, addressing the two significant things of his art work, which included the glorification of genius and the grandeur of his artistic skills.

Luna developed a friendly relationship with the King of Spain and was later commissioned by the Spanish Senate to paint a large canvas which was called the La Batalla de Lepanto(The Battle of Lepanto).[3] He moved to Paris in 1885 where he opened his own studio and befriended Hidalgo. A year after, he finished the piece El Pacto de Sangre (The Blood Compact) in accordance with the agreement he had with the Ayuntamiento of Manila. Depicted in this piece was the blood compact ceremony between the Datu Sikatuna, one of the lords in Bohol island, and the Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi.[4] It is now displayed in the Malacañan Palace. He also sent two other paintings in addition to the one required; the second canvas sent to Manila was a portrait of López de Legazpi

reconstructed by Luna from his recollection of a similar portrait he saw in the hall of the Cabildo, and the third was of Governor-general Ramón Blanco y Erenas.

Fernando Cueto Amorsolo (May 30, 1892 – April 24, 1972) is one of the most important artists in the history of painting in thePhilippines.[1] Amorsolo was a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes. He is popularly known for his craftsmanship and mastery in the use of light. Born in Paco, Manila, he earned a degree from the Liceo de Manila Art School in 1909.[2][3]

During the 1950s until his death in 1972, Amorsolo averaged to finishing 10 paintings a month. However, during his later years, diabetes, cataracts, arthritis, headaches, dizziness and the death of two sons affected the execution of his works. Amorsolo underwent a cataract operation when he was 70 years old, a surgery that did not impede him from drawing and painting. Two months after being confined at the St. Luke's Hospital in Manila, Amorsolo died of heart failure at the age of 79 on April 24, 1972 .

Four days after his death, Amorsolo was honoured as the first National Artist in Painting at the Cultural Center of the Philippines by then President Ferdinand Marcos.

Amorsolo was a close friend of the Philippine sculptor Guillermo Tolentino, the creator of the Caloocan City monument to the patriot Andrés Bonifacio.