MODULE: HCMA22_CONTEMPORARY MUSIC AND ARTS

MODERN ERA

At the end of this module, learners will be able to:

 Identify the arts during Modern period.

 Define the arts during Modern period.
 Enumerate the happenings during Modern Era

MODERN ERA (Neo Realism, Abstraction Modern styles)

What is Modern Art?

Modern art is quite different from contemporary art especially when in terms
of history and styles.
aModern era in the Philippine art began after World War 2 and the granting
independence. Writers and Artists posed the question of national identity as the
main theme of various art forms.
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It is referred to as “traditional compared to contemporary art. The styles

of modern art for example are now part of art and curricula and have become
academic.
The most well- known proponent of Modern art painting is Victorio Edades
whose work were initially rejected and misunderstood but later on his modernist
sensibility was shared by several artists. In this era artists explored various
mediums, techniques and themes that were at that time considered “new”.
There was an exploration of subject matter, content, and form. Using
modernists figuration, many of the artists explored folk themes and also crafted
commentaries on the urban condition and the effects of the war.

Modern artists do not aim to copy and idealize reality; instead, they change
the colors flatten the picture instead of creating illusions of depth, nearness and
farness. They depict what might be thought of as “ugly “and unpleasant instead
of the beautiful and pastoral.
Another strand of Modern art is abstraction. It consists of simplified
forms, which avoided mimetic representation. It is sometimes referred as
nonrepresentational or non-objective art as it emphasizes the relationship of
colors, line, space or the flatness of the canvas rather than an illusion of three
dimensionality. (crafted from: Faludette May Datulin et. al, 2016. Contemporary
Philippine Arts of the Regions p. 15)

Modern famous artists and their artworks

 Neo Realists Artist
The contemporary fine art trend in the Philippines beginning from the postwar
period. It is first used to refer to a group of artists associated with the Philippine
Art Gallery (1951-1969) who began to call themselves Neo-Realists in 1949.
Realism in this case refers to how these artists used their subjective, internal
vision of reality to create works of art. Neo-Realism was formed as a reaction to
the perceived academic and sentimental status of art in the previous generation.
In a sense it was a seminally representational style that was more open to various
degrees of abstraction opened up through increasing familiarity with western
modern art movements. Although initially facing disapproval from the public and
the established art world, the ideologies and styles of the Neo-Realists soon
became accepted and affected the development of Filipino art in the following
decades.
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1. Manansala – The Beggars (1952), Tuba Drinkers (1954),

Vicente Silva Manansala (January 22, 1910 –
August 22, 1981) was a Filipino cubist painter and
illustrator.

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, Quebec,
Canada. In 1950, he received a nine-month
scholarship to study at the École des Beaux-Arts
in Paris by the French government.

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 his Jeepneys, Manansala combined the elements of provincial folk
culture with the congestion issues of the city.

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).
2. Legaspi – Gadgets II (1949), Bad Girls (1947)

Cesar Legaspi was a Filipino painter known as

one of the 13 Moderns, a group of emergent
artists whose work, according to artist-art
educator Victorio Edades, was an alternative to
the classicism and nostalgia-laced realism
popular during the pre-World War II juncture of
American colonialism in the Philippines. Along
with peers Hernando Ocampo and Vicente
Manansala, Legaspi was part of a generation of
artists whose early image making engaged with
questions of distortion, and the liberties artists
could take in construing reality. In the early
1950s, these painters were regarded as the neo-
realist triumvirate. While they produced works
dealing with the same everyday subject matter as
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conservative artists of the period, they unselfconsciously took from other stylistic
traditions that they encountered through research and peer exchanges. In doing
so, they worked towards more individuated ways of rendering subjects, finding
affinities with Cubism, Surrealism, and Expressionism. In the post-World War II
period, the Neo-Realists manifested a cynicism toward the urbane, which they
resolved visually in different ways. A well-known work of Legaspi’s from this
period, Gadgets II (1949), depicts the mutant fusing of man and machine in an
age where the industrial was both feared and mythologized. This work, alongside
pieces imaging the working class (including stevedores, grave diggers, beggars,
seasonal farm workers, and internal migrants) is associated with his early
proletarian or proto-social realist phase.

3. HR Ocampo – The Contrast (1940), Genesis (1968)

Hernando Ocampo’s masterpieces had large

contribution to full understanding and awareness of
social realities in the Philippines. He made paintings
reflecting economic and psychological dislocation in
the country brought by World War II, a time of
widespread poverty, hunger, and misery. His works
also depicted objection against the disparity between
rich and poor. One vivid illustration portraying the
objection in social inequality is his painting, The
Contrast, which pictures a beggar eating in front of a
mansion. As a visual artist, he also envisioned to
come up with masterpieces showing a search for
Filipino spirit. His other major work of 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", Backdrop, Fiesta.
Ramon Estella
4. Victor Oyteza
Victor OTEYZA (1913-1979) is an artist born in 1913 The
oldest auction result ever registered on the website for an
artwork by this artist is a painting sold in 2017, at
Salcedo Auctions, and the most recent auction result is
a painting sold in 2020. Artprice.com's price levels for
this artist are based on 2 auction results. Especially:
painting.
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5. Romeo Tabuena
Romeo 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. Tabuena is best known for his depictions of
Philippine rural landscapes such as
farms, carabao, nipa huts in oil and watercolor
media. Often rendered in jewel-toned colors and
interlocking cubist-influenced shapes, his earlier
works maintain a sense of translucency and fluid
form while those from his later Mexican period are
more opaque and have a stylized “blocky” quality.
Tabuena began his career with several exhibits of
drawings and watercolors at the Philippine Art
Gallery in 1949. He is known for his watercolors, at
times in a vertical format, influenced by Chinese painting. His 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’s early work is often grouped with that
of other Philippine Neorealists including Vicente Manansala, HR Ocampo, Cesar
Legaspi, Victor Oteyza, Anita Magsaysay-Ho, and Nena Saguil.
Tabuena is also admired for his darkly-toned oil paintings which seem to reflect
the “proletarian” concerns. His figures are often short and squat, with hints
of Expressionist distortion and no bright colors to relieve the charged
atmosphere.
 Abstractionist Artists
The main feature of the abstract art is that it is a non-representational
practice, meaning that art movements that embrace abstraction departure from
accurate representation – this departure can be slight, partial, or complete. It
depends on what types of abstract art we are talking about. In geometric
abstraction and lyrical abstraction, we can talk about total abstraction.
Figurative art is characterized by partial abstraction. Even realistic art can have
partial abstraction as well. But, all abstract artists use color, memory and visual
sensation to show that reality is subjective – and that is probably one of the most
important characteristics of abstract art. This subjective approach in
contemporary art coincides with similar approaches in social sciences,
particularly in philosophy.
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1. Constancio Benardo
Constancio Bernardo (1913 – 2013) is a
pioneering Filipino abstractionist known for his
geometric and color-field paintings. He returned
to the Philippines in the early 50s after
graduating from Yale University where he
studied under Josef Albers and pursued a life-
long commitment to painting and teaching at the
University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts.
This monograph accompanies the centennial
retrospective held at Ayala Museum in Manila in November 2013 and provides
the first opportunity to view the full range of Bernardo’s works, from his
critically-acclaimed abstract works to his lesser-known classical drawings and
figurative paintings. Includes texts by Yolanda Johnson, Ringo Bunoan and
Carina Evangelista
2. Lee Aguinaldo
Lee Aguinaldo’s iconic “Linear No. 98”
and “Linear No. 99,” which were the
Philippines’ representative pieces to the
10h Sao Paolo Biennale in 1971, are
among the highlights of León Gallery’s
Magnificent September Auction 2020,
on Sept. 19, at 2 p.m.
“The two paintings have been called ‘a
watershed pair’ that reflect Aguinaldo’s
internationalism, suiting those halcyon
years,” said León art consultant Lisa
Guerrero Nakpil
Aguinaldo would receive rave reviews from critics, including the influential Alice
M. L. Coseteng who wrote, “His paintings are actually the painting of light. His
two-dimensional surfaces reflect light as they glow in brilliant tones or opaquely
subdued. As an artist, Aguinaldo has to be given credit for the painstaking care
and patience with which he has painted and composed his colors to capture the
glow, the reflection, and the change of light as if on the slick and glossy surface
of a car fender.”
The inclusion of Aguinaldo’s celebrated works for the Brazilian art powwow in
the auction is one of the “exciting developments” in the general auction scene,
according to Jaime Ponce de León. “We’re seeing a ‘flight to quality,’” he noted.
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“Another interesting development,” Ponce de León added, “is the growing

rediscovery among collectors of abstract art.” Several masters of this intriguing
form of expression are represented in the upcoming September auction to feed
this renaissance.
3. Jose Joya

National artist Jose Joya was a pioneer

modern and abstract artist who was
active as a painter, printmaker, mixed-
media artist and ceramicist. It has been
said that it was Joya who “spearheaded
the birth, growth and flowering of
abstract expressionism” in the
Philippines. His mature abstract works
have been said to be “characterized by
calligraphic gestures and linear forces,
and a sense of color vibrancy emanating from an Oriental sensibility.” Joya’s
sense of color has been said to have come from the hues of the Philippine
landscape, and his use of rice paper in collages demonstrated an interest in
transparency.
Jose Tanig Joya was born on June 3, 1931, the son of Jose Joya Sr. and
Asuncion Tanig. He began sketching at the age of eleven. At a young age, he
became interested in studying architecture, but found that he did not have the
aptitude for the math and science that architecture would require. While
attending the University of the Philippines he was introduced to the paintings of
Fernando Amorsolo, and began his study of painting. He was initially schooled
in the traditional tradition — in which the standards had been set by Amorsolo
and Tolentino — but gradually was influenced by American abstraction and by
the emerging trends in Philippine modernism. He was mentored by Guillermo
Tolentino, Ireneo Miranda, Domindaor Castaneda and Virginia Agbayani.
4. Fernando Zobel
Zóbel was born in Ermita, Manila in the Philippines to Enrique
Zóbel de Ayala (1877–1943) and Fermina Montojo y Torrontegui
and was a member of the prominent Zóbel de Ayala family. He
was a brother of Jacobo Zóbel (father of Enrique J. Zóbel),
Alfonso (father of Jaime Zóbel de Ayala) and Mercedes Zóbel
McMicking, all children of his father from his first wife,
Consuelo Róxas de Ayala (who died in September 25, 1907 at
the age of 30). He was a nephew and namesake of Fernando
Antonio Zóbel de Ayala, the eldest brother of his father.His
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father was a patron of Fernando Amorsolo. In gratitude, Amorsolo would teach

the young Fernando on the rudiments of art.

5. Arturo Luz – Street Musicians (1952)

Arturo Luz is a Filipino printmaker, sculptor,
designer, and founding member of the modern Neo-
Realist school in Philippine art. Influenced by
Modernist painters such as Paul Klee, he has worked
in a variety of styles and techniques in varying
degrees of abstraction to create playful geometric
figures and forms. He was born on November 20,
1926 in Manila, Republic of the Phillipines and went
on to study at the School of Fine Arts at the University
of Santo Tomas in Manila, the Art School of the
Brooklyn Museum in New York, and at the Académie
Grade Chaumière in Paris. In 1976, Luz became founding director of the
Metropolitan Museum of Manila, a position he held until 1986. His international
shows include the Philippine Cultural Exhibition held in New York in 1953, Arte
de America y España in 1963, the 11th São Paolo Biennial in 1971, the Tokyo
International Print Biennial in 1974, and the 8th British International Print
Biennale in 1984. In 1997, he was named the National Artist in Visual Arts by
the government of his home country.
6. Nina Saguil - Cargadores (1951)
Nena Saguil (September 19, 1914 – February, 1994)
was a Filipina artist
of modernist and abstract paintings and ink
drawings. She was most known for her cosmic,
organic, and spiritual abstract works depicting
internal landscapes of feeling and imagination. For
these, Saguil is considered a pioneer of Filipino
abstract art.
Simplicia "Nena" Laconico Saguil was born on
September 19, 1914 in Santa Cruz, Laguna,
Philippines to Epifanio Saguil and Remedios
Laconico. Her father was a private physician to the
country's second president, Manuel Quezon. One of
ten children, Saguil was brought up in a conservative Catholic household. Saguil
rejected the Catholic school education her parents desired for her. She received
her education at University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts where she
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studied under Fernando Amorsolo, a conservative painter and teacher who

adhered to the Philippine art canon of the time. She graduated from UP in 1933
with a Certificate in Painting. She received her undergraduate degree in 1949,
after the Philippines gained its independence following the end of World War II.

Modern Architectural structures:

1. Church of Holy Sacrifice (1955)
Years before the construction of the
present Church of the Holy Sacrifice
was finished in December 20, 1955,
there stood an old sawali-bamboo
building on its grounds, a chapel of
U.S. Army detachment, later turned
into a stable. Fr. John Patrick
Delaney, S.J., then already U.P.
chaplain when the old campus moved
from Manila to Diliman in 1949, saw
its possibilities and with the help of volunteers, had the crumbling facility
repaired and converted into a little brown chapel. To the U.P. Diliman
Catholics, it was their house of God and place of worship.
2. Church of the Risen Lord
The Church of the Risen Lord is
a Protestant church located at
the University of the
Philippines campus in
Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. It
arose about years ago through a
Protestant student group named the
Christian Youth Movement (CYM).

Another architectural innovation is Cesar Concio's Church of the Risen

Lord. It is a stone throw from Leandro Locsin’s circular chapel, the Parish
of the Holy Sacrifice. The structure was proclaimed in the fifties as “an
engineering masterpiece with its double parabola.” The chapel was saddle-
shaped – a hyperbolic paraboloid with flat ends. The lower slopes of the
vaulted wall were punctured by windows and vertical louvers at both sides
of the longitudinal elevation. The glass-clad façade had an opening defined
by a smaller arch that supported a cantilevered porte-cochere. This
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entrance directly led to the processional nave, terminating the vision at

the altar. Just above the entrance, a choir loft could be ascended via a
circular winding stair. It is one of the few churches that is modernly
designed and lacks iconographic religious references
3. Chapel of Saint Joseph the worker

The St. Joseph the Worker

Chapel, commonly known as
the Angry Christ Church, is
a Roman Catholic chapel located
inside the Victorias Milling
Company residential complex
in Victorias City, Negros
Occidental, Philippines. It is
considered as the first example
of modern sacred architecture in
the Philippines. It is dedicated
to St. Joseph the Worker.
The church was designed by the Czech architect Antonín Raymond,
himself already recognized as the founder of modern architecture in Japan.
Raymond designed the church to be earthquake-proof since the Philippines is in
the earthquake belt. The St. Joseph the Worker Chapel is made up of two
sections, the nave and the tower. They are connected by movable beams holding
the building up well even during earthquakes. Raymond also took into
consideration the climate in the Philippine thus he designed the structure to
allow maximum air circulation in the hot and humid climate. The church was
declared Important Cultural Property of the Philippines in December 2015.
The church is also known for its modern altar painting of so-called "Angry Christ"
painted in vivid colors by Alfonso Ossorio, Filipino-American abstract
expressionist artist.

For further reading please refer to the link provided:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjhXohLgJ6M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84lF61VOtNI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPpTpPhb0Ck&t=3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSEtfqGWlN8
References:
 https://www.slideshare.net/RonNelAlmencion/the-philippine-arts-
during-american-colonization
 http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/american-art.htm