KASINING ESSAYS by Arnaldo de Tondo

Below is the exhibition notes I wrote for the second Papelismo Group art exhibit at Galerie Anna in 2014) Essay 65. P A P E L M I S M O Benjie Torrado Cabrera, Renato Habulan, Alfredo Liongoren, Arnel Mirasol, and Pinggot Zulueta will unveil at the Galerie Anna, PAPELMISMO,  the sequel to their critically-acclaimed 2012 show, PAPELISMO. Joining the five this time are Thomas Daquioag, Neil Doloricon, Alfredo Esquillo, Egai Talusan Fernandez, Emmanuel Garibay, Pablo Baen Santos, and Allison Wong-David. Except for one or two, this roster of exhibit participants include names who belong to that group of brave souls who dare bucked the political and cultural establishment during the Marcos regime and went on to make bigger names for themselves in the Philippine art scene. Collectively referred to as the Social Realists, they are firm advocates of the art of commitment and social change. This is the second in a series of shows mapped out by Renato Habulan for this group of artists intent...

  Essay 64. FROM AUTODIDACT TO MASTER PAINTER By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  AMBROCIO MALLARI is an autodidact or self-taught painter. He is that in the sense that he never studied in a fine arts school. What Mallari knows about painting he learned when he worked as an apprentice in a shop in Manila that produced movie billboards or cartelons. His uncle Perfecto Mercado brought him there when he was still in his teens. That job was a huge opportunity for a boy who used to practice drawing by bringing pencil and paper whenever he drove their carabao to the pasture to graze. Knowing that the opportunity to study in college was beyond their means, Mallari took advantage of his time in the shop to absorb the secrets of the craft. In 1975, Mallari began painting easel-sized works on canvas. It didn't take long for him to master oil painting and he was able in time to sell his paintings in galleries in Pampanga and Manila and later on, even in Hawaii. Mallari was born in Concepcion, Ta...

  Essay 63. TRUE-BLUE SON OF ANGONO By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  The scenic Laguna de Bay is fringed almost all around by the lakeshore towns of Laguna and Rizal. Most prominent among those towns is Angono, the birthplace of the late great National Artist Carlos "Botong" Francisco. Acknowledged by many as the art capital of the Philippines, Angono boasts not only of having Botong Francisco as its native son, but also Lucio San Pedro, a National Artist for Music. Angono is also JOVITO ANDRES's native town. He was born there on December 14, 1966. His father was a farmer and fisherman. His interest in art was aroused even before grade school by the illustrations in the comics given them by his aunt (who was a comics distributor) which he religiously copied. The annual exhibits at the town plaza of famous painters like Jose Blanco, Nemiranda, Salvador Juban, Lito Balagtas, and Weng Unidad further boosted Andres's ambition to become a painter. The success of those painters ...

  Essay 62. CELEBRATING CELEBRATIONS By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."  With that quote, Picasso elevated naif, primitivist, and even "childlike" art, onto a status equal to that enjoyed by Cubism, Fauvism, and other modernist art styles. Pablo Picasso, the pioneer art deconstructivist, was already a master of academic realism when he was in his mid-teens. But at some point in his career, Picasso grew tired of imitating natural appearances and began distorting and deconstructing forms and figures so that his works began to resemble more and more paintings that can easily be done by a child. That's all for the good it seems, because Picasso's radical creative moves liberated painters from the tedious task of copying nature as is, and expanded the definition of artworks that are considered aesthetically pleasing and professionally-done. AMADOR BARQUILLA's paintings - with the ex...

  Essay 61. CHURCH PORTRAITS AND THEN SOME By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  I first became aware of AL PEREZ in the early 1970s, when his paintings of churches were featured, if my memory serves me right, in a magazine. That feature was probably a review of his first solo art exhibit at Galerie Bleue. It was a most auspicious beginning for the 25 year old Perez, because not only was his show graced by the heavyweights of the Philippine art scene, all the  paintings on show were also snapped up by art collectors, including the then first lady Imelda Marcos  Dubbed as the portrait artist of Philippine churches, Perez never tires of painting churches, although the formal qualities of the churches he paints today are a far cry from those that he painted in the past. Perez's early church paintings were academic, mere retinal transcriptions (as the art critic Leonidas Benesa would put it) of the subject matter before him. Even so, it proved to be what the art collectors wanted....

    Essay 60. ART JOURNEY OF THE MANGYAN ARTIST By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  Let me borrow a term that pertains to folklore or mythic narratives from long ago: Ethnic Genre. I supposed ethnic genre could also be used to categorize the subject matter of painters who like to portray or narrate in paint not only the visual attributes of members of ethnic tribes, but also their doings or way of life. Ethnic genre is different from ethnic art, which is but the aggregate of art objects the tribal natives create themselves. MATT RELOX specializes in ethnic genre. He was born in Mindoro - in Bansud, Oriental Mindoro specifically - a Philippine island whose indigenous inhabitants are the Mangyans. Relox is not of Mangyan ancestry himself, but living in relatively close proximity with these people whose way of life and peculiar clothing are very much different from those of the lowland inhabitants, Relox couldn't help but be inspired to document his impression of them in paint and o...

  Essay 59. THE DYNAMIC LADY PAINTER  By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol  JOSEPHINE "ESANG" BEJASA ADAME belongs to a not quite long line of Filipino painters who espouse environmentalism in art. Most prominent among them are Prudencio Lamarroza and Rafael Cusi. I was at the opening of "Myth and Magic in the Image of Woman", Prudencio Lamarroza's 1984 art exhibit at the Gallery Genesis which featured his Amburayan Queen series. It was my first time to encounter the actual and stunning works of Lammaroza, the artist dubbed as an ecological painter by art critic Leo Benesa. Rafael Cusi, at around the same time, was also making a name for himself for his series of watercolors celebrating colorful marine life. Cusi is Esang's uncle. Thus, we can surmise that it was he who inspired Esang to take up art as her other profession. Why other profession? That's because Accounting is what Esang took up in college at the University of Batangas. She later earned her Master...