A portrait of the new National Artist takes us through an extraordinary life in pursuit of an artistic ideal—across two continents, and spanning six decades and counting. Reuben Ramas Cañete traces Federico Aguilar Alcuaz’s brilliant career from the Philippines to Europe and back again, and sums up the artist’s masterful contributions to Philippine art.
READ MOREOn July 30, 2009, Malacañang Palace issued the newest list of National Artists of the Philippines proclaimed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Among those in the list was Federico Aguilar Alcuaz, who has been widely expected to receive the award after the final recommendations of the joint Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) Boards were submitted to Malacañang last June. Alcuaz thus joins the elite list of 14 visual artists who have been given the award since 1972, when Fernando Amorsolo was proclaimed the first National Artist.
Federico Aguilar y Alcuaz was born in Manila on June 6, 1932 to Mariano Ana Aguilar and Encarnacion Alcuaz. Federico was the sixth of eleven children, one of seven boys and four girls. Mariano was a lawyer as well as an accomplished amateur musician, who knew how to play the violin and piano, and who dreamt that his compositions could one day be performed by an orchestra in New York City. Aguilar Alcuaz inherited this musical talent and intuition, taught by Mariano as a child to play the cello; and became a member
of the tiples choir for the parish of Santo Rosario at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) campus. This musicality would stay on with Aguilar Alcuaz, in his passionate embrace of classical music as background music while he worked or relaxed, and as a somewhat eccentric figure in later life, obsessively latching on to his portable Casio Tone keyboard while humming away at his favorite hotel music bars and lounges.
Federico first took up an Associate in Arts degree at San Beda College, in preparation for a degree in Law, intending to follow in his father’s footsteps. At the same time though, Aguilar Alcuaz also crossenrolled in the Fine Arts program of the University of the Philippines (UP), which was then newly-transplanted in its Diliman campus. At the UP, he was tutored by National Artist Fernando Amorsolo, Dr. Toribio Herrera, Ireneo Miranda, Constancio Bernardo, and National Artist Guillermo Tolentino; while National Artists Jose Joya and Napoleon Abueva became his classmates (renowned artists Araceli Limcaco Dans and Juvenal Sanso were his seniors).
Between 1952 and 1955, Aguilar Alcuaz took up his Law degree at the Ateneo de Manila, which was then still at its Padre Faura campus. Encouraged by Father Thomas Cannon, who saw his artistic abilities as a plus, Federico was given a studio space to work in at the Ateneo. Aguilar Alcuaz also attended the influential graduate lecture on art appreciation held by the Modernist Fernando Zobel at the Ateneo Graduate School. The years between 1952 and 1955 were fruitful years for the young Aguilar Alcuaz, as he gained his first acceptance as an artist by winning the first prize at the University of the Philippines Art Competition in 1953, the first prize at the Shell Art Competition in 1954, and the second prize at the AAP Annual Art Competition in 1954; as well as three solo exhibitions (the last being at the famous Philippine Art Gallery run by Lyd Arguilla) that he mounted in these years.
It’s a potentially rewarding albeit risky proposition, but selling art at auction is always an exciting option. In the second installment of a three-part series on auctions, REGINA P. BAXTER gives us a panoramic view of the bidding hall, this time from the seller’s side.
Second of a three-part series
READ MORESelling art can be a lucrative profession as well as an enjoyable hobby, and many people would agree that auctions can be entertaining, profitable, and a fantastic place to meet fellow art enthusiasts. But whether you’re buying or selling art, it’s best to enter the bidding arena with a full armor. Here, we give you a few pointers on how to gauge the saleable potential of your assets, as well as some important facts you need to know about selling at auctions. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced collector, read up on useful trade secrets and insider advice on how to achieve the best price possible for your assets at auction.
Thousands of antiques, collectibles and works of art are up for sale every year in auction houses worldwide. The competition to sell artwork is intense and international. An essential aspect of selling art in auctions is to know all the significant details about your artwork. An owner must research the artists, the significance of the piece and have a reasonable idea of its desirability and value in the marketplace. Researching this information can either be done by the owner or by hiring an appraiser or an art consultant to do it.
Why sell at auctions?
Selling a painting at auction can be as exhilarating and rewarding as it can be stressful and disappointing (if the artwork is sold below expectations, or not sold at all). No one can predict what will happen to artwork at auctions, but much can be done prior to a sale to make sure that the stress and disappointment are minimal, and profitability prevails.
Whether an owner wishes to make money from the sale of their artwork or simply to see what the market will bear, once the decision has been made to sell at auction, the artwork instantly enters a totally new realm of recognition and value. It takes on a whole new identity. From the point a work of art is consigned to auction until the hammer falls at the end of bidding, it no longer belongs to the owner, so to speak, but to the market. No longer is it a private piece hanging in the confines of the owners home or place of work, but it is now an object subject to the scrutiny of the public.
Salvador “Joel” Alonday spins intriguing stories from the depth and curve, the cut and shape, the light and darkness of wood
TEXT BY MARC ESCALONA GABA
Sculptor Salvador “Joel” Alonday’s recent work is built with stoneware and stories. It’s uncannily intuitive, and uniquely evocative of the domicile. Anyone who has taken notice of indigenous stoneware would notice that his recent sculpture took notes from their forms. Alonday says, “It’s about learning another process, another material,” he says.
“Th at’s what’s enjoyable about making art. Of course, it means that I’d be exploring possibility.”
With a strong background in industrial design, the playfulness of his mind has been attuned to how objects are produced and how eff ects are created, and he reconnects
with his creative freedom just as he discovers new techniques. “Before planting myself full-time into sculpture,” he recalls, “I was doing export. I kept a day job. I did that for about 10 years. And then sometime in the late 80s, a friend of mine who was dean at the PWU [Philippine Women’s University] and I started making paper-based products.”
Looking back, Alonday says that each time a new material came his way because of his professional preoccupations, he would eventually experiment on it as sculptural material. “One of the fi rst sculpture pieces that I exhibited that is purely process and form,” he says, “were these three pieces of sculpture all made of paper mache, or taka as we call it in the vernacular.” He experimented with epoxy, even concrete, and eventually worked with resin. But as the toxicity of resin’s fumes weakened his immune system to the point of contracting tuberculosis, Alonday decided to shift to a less harmful material.
“It was a time when I was deciding to move away from using synthetics and working with more natural materials,” Alonday says. With a laugh, he adds that deciding on the material “was a choice between [himself ], and working with resin and quitting smoking.” And despite his fascination with material and process, Alonday’s art is always, to a degree, autobiographical. “Your art is always a part of you,” he likes to tell his art students. “Every time your work is inspired by something from you, when somebody looks at it, that person sees your soul.” Looking at a piece he calls “Spirit Vessel”, he muses: “What else is a human body if not that?”
In Seb Chua’s current series, the contrast between thinking and feeling is made by interlinking the inner image of ideas made expressive in visual form
TEXT BY REUBEN RAMAS CANETE
Consisting of a set of Abstract Expressionist paintings which combines atmospheric background tonality and foreground gestural strokes; and resin-cast sculptures of elegantly curvilinear abstract forms and cubistic human figures, Hemispheres by artist Seb Chua plays with the idea of artistic passion and creative energy that tumbles out of his capacious imagination. A scion of hardworking business-oriented family traditions, Seb’s outlook on art is as a treasured balm to alleviate the daily stresses of work and life.
Chua says that the concept for Hemispheres originates not only from “the distinction of the logical and creative sides of the mind, but rather to a peculiar set of meanings I often associate with when doing either my sculptures or paintings. I believe in the abstraction of reality, but the fact is, abstractions take on many forms. I have said before that what true beauty is can only be defined by the ability of interpretation, and thus I conjure my styles to seemingly contradict each other through a structure of the hard and the coruscant versus the bold and the vivid. My hemispheres see eye to eye, even with differences, because I know they manifest the same creativity by the interpretations
thrown upon them.”
In Seb Chua’s current series, the contrast between thinking and feeling is made by interlinking the inner image of ideas made expressive in visual form, as well as projecting forms made by consciously and unconsciously interacting with media as well as the general theme of man’s interrelation with his social environment and nature. The ability of
man’s splitting and fusion of thinking and feeling is what constitutes the two defining “halves” of Hemispheres, by what Seb refers to as “sculpting with my mind, and painting with my thoughts. Th e subjectivity of my works though, also reside in the emotions I try to convey using visual elements. As far as mediums are concerned, my hands love exploring different orientations of media, such as cast marble and bronze for sculptures, and acrylics and oils for painted works. Although I favor several of these comfortable
media, I think there’s always time to explore around for new and beautiful raw materials to conquer.”
Daniel de la Cruz sets his full-figured female forms into motion, resulting in pure poetry
Text by Tara FT Sering
Photographs by Richard Lazaro
Of all the female archetypes, there is one that appears to have become a generous fount of inspiration for sculptor Daniel dela Cruz: in the four years that the 43-year-old artist, formerly a business whiz in the export industry, has devoted to being a full-time sculptor, woman as mother has fueled a steady stream of creative output. Other pieces in his oeuvre celebrate female qualities not necessarily attributed to motherhood alone, but the same underlying theme of creative energy runs through every single one, especially those in a third collection called Himig, where musical instruments are integral parts of swelling female forms. Dela Cruz’s works have comprised a total of three enthusiastically received one-man shows at the Ayala Museum in Manila, and one in Singapore. It’s almost impossible to resist pointing out that in de la Cruz’s world, mother as muse just keeps giving birth to works of art.
By current standards, dela Cruz’s resolve to make art, the one that many fi ne arts students declare even before they turn 20, is considered a late pitch. But lateblooming
does have its benefi ts. As timing has a logic all its own, the artist recognizes that things happened the way they should have for him, and the events that led up to his current pursuit as an artist have all contributed to it. For starters, the act of making art is much more of a pleasure, dela Cruz concedes, when freed of commercial pressures. More importantly, the depth and breadth of his own life experiences have given the admittedly introspective artist a wellspring to draw on.
Like most of his generation, dela Cruz, at the prodding of his father, had angled to become either a doctor or a lawyer and got as far as completing a pre-law degree at the University of the Philippines. As an 18-year-old student, de la Cruz cultivated a hobby sculpting action figures and creatures, modeled from his own hyperactive imagination, and landed on the pages of Panorama, a long-running weekend lifestyle magazine distributed by a major daily. It was no small feat to be singled out for the print feature, and dela Cruz, who had no formal training apart from a few summer art classes as a child, felt suitably validated.
© Contemporary Art Philippines 2010
