2 American Traditions and Transformations in Philippine Visual Arts (1900 Onward)

2/15/22, 4:26 PM American Traditions and Transformations in Philippine Visual Arts (1900 Onward)
Cultural Center of the Philippines
 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
PHILIPPINE ART
American Traditions and Transformations in

Philippine Visual Arts (1900 Onward)
The American Military and Civilian Commission Period

(1899-1907)
With the entry of American rule in the Philippines following the signing of the Treaty of Paris in Dec 1898, the
violence and socioeconomic chaos that ensued—first with the surrender and repatriation of Spanish forces after
the end of the Spanish-American War in August 1898, and then with the onset of the Philippine-American War
(officially from Feb 1899 to Jul 1902, but with scattered armed resistance in various areas until 1913)—guaranteed
the closure of the Escuela Superior de Pintura, Grabado y Escultura (School for Painting, Engraving and Sculpture)
and the dispersal of its remaining faculty and students, including its last director, Rafael Enriquez, who would
refuse repatriation to Spain. The lack of an official art academy throughout the years 1899-1907, despite an
apparent market of art students in Manila, resulted in the opening of the houses of the former academicians as
private art schools, or else the opening of workshops that trained art pupils. Among these art schools were those
opened by Vicente Rivera with Francisco Murriel and Balbino Alpaso at 270 Calle Cervantes in 1903; by Teodoro
Buenaventura on Calle Magdalena, Trozo, in 1905; and by Jose Ma. Asuncion, Miguel Zaragoza, Vicente Francisco,
and Rafael Enriquez in their house-studios along Calle San Sebastian from 1903 to 1907 (Pilar 1992; Castañeda
1964).
https://epa.culturalcenter.gov.ph/3/14/2088/ 1/17
Fabian de la Rosa, Riverview of Santa Ana, UP Vargas Museum Collection
With the establishment of an American military government in 1898 and later a civilian executive body called the
Philippine Commission headed by Jacob Schurman (1899-1900) and later William Howard Taft (1900-02), peace
conditions—often secured under intense American military surveillance and the suppression of pro-independence
aspirations—returned to Manila and other major cities in Luzon and the Visayas. The Philippine Commission
governed the Philippines between 1901 and 1907 by passing laws that overhauled the country’s political, economic,
and legal systems, to give American colonial rule a semblance of civilian supremacy. The Philippine Organic Act of
1902, passed by the United States (US) Congress, also allowed limited political rights for Filipinos to vote on local
officials from presidente municipal (mayor) to provincial governor, in preparation for the election by 1907 of the
members of the Philippine Assembly, which would serve as the lower house to complement the Philippine
Commission as upper house. Then more importantly, by 1902 the economic policy of the Americans as far as
foreign and domestic trade were concerned became less restrictive. These allowed the local economy to expand,
causing surplus income to flow, first to the foreign and American-dominated businesses; then to the urban-based
big Filipino merchants, mercantile traders, trade laborers, and small-scale businessmen; and then eventually to
the rural-based Filipino landlords, agricultural merchants, and farmers. The redistribution of purchased Church
lands was undertaken by the Insular Government in 1903 and this freed up property for sale to Filipinos as well as
Americans. However, the Americans never let their guard down, taking step to suppress Philippine nationalism,
chiefly through laws like the 1901 Sedition Law, the 1902 Brigandage Act, the 1903 Reconcentration Act, and the
1907 Flag Law. In addition, the emphasis on civilizational tutelage through mass education was effected starting
with American soldier-teachers coming to the Philippines in 1899, and supplemented by the arrival of civilian
educators from the USA aboard the transport U.S.S. Thomas (hence the moniker Thomasites) in 1901. The impact of
American-conceived and supervised mass education on Filipino culture and art would thus be assured.
Photography of local subjects by American soldiers was a chief area of visual artistic production during this early
period, as the Harry Harnish Collection of photographs from 1898 to 1907, now at the University of the Philippines
(UP) Main Library, attests (Lico 2004). In addition, comprehensive photo-ethnography of indigenous peoples was
undertaken in order to “frame” and “prove” the primitive and uncivilized nature of Filipinos, to justify continued
American occupation and tutelage. This was undertaken between 1902 and 1907 by various photographers under
Commissioner Dean Worcester who provided imagery pivotal in the establishment of the 1903 Census, as well as
the content of exhibition materials sent to the 1904 Saint Louis World’s Fair. Early American expeditions to
photograph Filipinos included the Charles Martin expedition to the Cordilleras in 1902 and Daniel Folkmar’s ethno-
photographic survey in 1903, which classified various Filipinos using the then-accepted pseudoscience of
physiognomy (Vergara 1995).
Vidal Tampinco, Mother Nature, ca 1930, Ernesto and Araceli Salas Collection (Photo by Kiko del Rosario)
Among the chief sources for artistic production in this early period of American rule were commissions, sales, and
gifts to American administrators and soldiers; and the rise of commercial arts via the opening of new businesses
often dominated by American capital of new entrepreneurs—most of whom served in the Philippine-American
War. Local artistic patronage by the principalia (local political elite) and cacique (landlord) classes, as well as the
Catholic Church, would suffer a corresponding downturn due to the dislocations of war and economic
opportunism by the new colonizers, except in those urban areas where economic recovery (such as in Manila and
Cebu) was swift due to American administration. Moreover, the incorporation of massive infusions of American
infrastructure, in the form of the planning of new cities like Baguio, the restoration and upgrading of roads and rail
networks, and the building of new public works and government buildings, spurred economic development
among the local population.
Portraits of prominent American administrators, like those of William Howard Taft and Arthur Ferguson, were
painted by Fabian de la Rosa starting 1903. While preparing studies for the Death of General Lawton, 1903
(destroyed 1945), de la Rosa did plein air (outdoor or in-situ) studies of the riverine environments of Marikina and
San Mateo, which are among the first such purely Philippine landscape works done in the 20th century. In Paris,
Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo was commissioned by the Insular Government in 1903 to paint an allegory of the
surrender of Philippine sovereignty to the United States in exchange for “civilizational tutelage,” Per Pacem et
Libertatem (Through Peace and Liberty), 1904 (destroyed 1945). This painting and Death of General Lawton
would be installed in government buildings in Manila by Dec 1907.
As a means of self-organizing to take advantage of new economic opportunities of American rule in Manila,
various Filipino and Spanish artists based in the Philippines banded together as the Centro de Artistas on 11 Feb
1904. Composed of painters, sculptors, musicians, and writers, the organization set up various public programs for
music and literature, while serving the educational needs of students in these various artistic fields. Its officers
were the painter-sculptor Eulogio Garcia Velarde, president; the engraver Fernando Zamora, vice-president; the
painter Cecilio Gloria, treasurer; and the sculptor Juan Flamiño, vice-secretary. In order to facilitate the teaching of
courses (which were most likely done in ateliers located in the workshops of various maestros), department heads
were also appointed: Isabelo Tampinco for Architecture, Manuel Flores for Sculpture, Ciriaco Gaudinez for
Silversmithing, Toribio Antillon for Painting, and Isidro Roxas for Music (Pilar and Guillermo 1993, 205-6).
As a means of showcasing the cultural resources of their newly acquired colonies, the American government sent
a sizable contingent of Filipino natives to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (also known as the Saint Louis
World’s Fair) to inform and entertain visitors about “exotic” and “primitive” culture and customs, sitting them in a
“Philippine village” where regular “performances” of their “native ways,” such as the butchering and eating of dogs
by the Igorots, were undertaken. There was also a Salon exhibition at the same exposition where recent works by
major Filipino artists were sent. Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo sent his Per Pacem et Libertatem, along with 23 other
paintings. His El Violinista won the grand prize of the competition, while his other works garnered four gold
medals, six silvers, four bronzes, and two honorable mentions (Roces 1995, 171-72). Also in the same competition,
de la Rosa won gold for Planting Rice and bronze for Death of General Lawton (Pilar in Labrador 2007, 14);
while Miguel Zaragoza won a gold medal for Portrait of Fr. Jose Guerrero, one of the 16 works he sent (Pilar 1992,
23); Vicente Rivera y Mir won a silver medal for Fishermen at Bangkusay (Pilar 1992, 38); Patricio Gaston O’Farrell
won a bronze medal for Portrait of Juan Luna; and Jorge Pineda won honorable mention for Las Buyeras (Betel-
Nut Vendors), out of the six he sent for competition (Pilar 1992, 35).
Commercial lithographic printing made headway in this period, especially under the Carmelo and Bauermann
Press, where prints for flyers, posters, waybills, and illustrations were produced. The expansion of initially
Spanish, and then English mass-circulation magazines that were extensively pictured and illustrated is also a
hallmark of this period, with the inaugural of the American-owned Philippine Magazine in 1904, the Spanish-
language magazine Excelsior in 1905, and the American-owned Philippines Free Press in 1905. These gave a
platform for Filipino illustrators to reproduce their works in graphic form (Buhain 1998). Among the most active
illustrators of this and the subsequent period would be Jorge Pineda, who worked for Carmelo and Bauermann,
and is assumed to be the real identity of the nom de plume Makahiya, chief illustrator of the satirical weekly
magazine Lipang Kalabaw, whose first issue came out on 27 Jul 1907 (Roces and McCoy 1985, 8-9).
Filipinos Ilustres, a lithographic print by Jorge Pineda based on a composite drawing by

Guillermo Tolentino, 1911 Nicanor G. Tiongson Collection
The nationalist commemoration of fallen heroes, and the ideals of the Katipunan revolution, was also represented
in the visual arts even at this period of aggressive American censorship, in prints like Filipinos Ilustres, and in
monuments. In Feb 1899, the first Rizal Monument in the Philippines was completed at Daet, Camarines Norte. In
the form of a three-sided short pylon on a square base and unadorned by figurative statuary, it antedated the
Rizal Monument at Luneta by 14 years, and contained Masonic elements executed by a local sculptor, Sanz
(Sarion 2011). In 1903, a monument featuring concrete busts of Rizal, Mabini, and Bonifacio was completed by
Mariano Madriñan and Jose Caancan at Paete, Laguna (Castañeda 1964, 98). In 1905, the first concrete full-figure
sculpture of a revolutionary figure was undertaken by Ramon Martinez at Balintawak, titled Homenaje del Pueblo
Filipino a los Heroes del ’96 (Tribute of the Filipino People to the Heroes of ’96) aka Cry of Balintawak. This is
the figure of a shouting Katipunero striding forward, carrying a flag and a bolo. This statue, which is often assumed
to be a portrait of Andres Bonifacio, was moved to the UP Diliman campus in 1967.
In scenic painting, the two Filipino apprentices of Cesare Alberoni—Juan Abelardo and Tomas Antillon—did telon
backdrops and sets for sarsuwela plays at the Teatro Zorrilla, aside from the church interior decorations in central
and southern Luzon that petered out in this period due to the challenges posed by American Protestant
evangelization, the redistribution of Church lands by the Insular Government, and the rise of Gregorio Aglipay’s
Iglesia Filipina Independiente (Philippine Independent Church).
The Philippine Assembly Period (1907-35)
With the inauguration of the Philippine Assembly in Dec 1907, the initial steps toward political autonomy were
taken. The Philippine Commission’s composition was also changed to include more prominent Filipinos like Pedro
Paterno, Ignacio Villamor, and Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera. The local leadership under Sergio Osmeña, Manuel L.
Quezon, Manuel Roxas, and Elpidio Quirino would also be established via the Philippine Assembly in 1907, leading
to the development of a century-long “cacique democracy” ruled by landed or professional Filipino elites
(Anderson 1988). Military control of the countryside was still under American supervision, but more active
deployment of the Philippine Constabulary ensured that fewer numbers of American troops were required, except
for areas in Mindanao where armed resistance was still serious. Economic progress and the expansion of the
American-dominated colonial civil service was emphasized between 1908 and 1913 under Republican-appointed
governor-generals like James Francis Smith and William Cameron Forbes. But by the time of Democrat US
President Woodrow Wilson (1913-20), the insular bureaucracy was extensively Filipinized under Gov-Gen Francis B.
Harrison. A return of Republican-appointed governor-generals in the 1920s produced frictions with the elite, which
led to a resurgence of nationalism but also to economic advances among the upper class facilitated through
economic “special relations” and favorable American import quotas. By the early 1930s, during the early years of
Democrat US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, discussions about Philippine independence were
extensively undertaken as the United States received a series of missions from the Philippines. The Tydings-
McDuffee Law, passed by the US Congress in 1934, allowed the transition to full independence via the
establishment of a Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, as well as the drafting of a new constitution. The period
between 1907 and 1935 is thus a vital time of transition from a colony to a republic, in which patterns of
governance, economic development, acculturation, and artistic production would become set for decades to
come. Crucially, it was in this period that nativism became a catchword for nationalist aspiration, and lowland
cacique culture began to be seen as a fundamental marker of Filipino identity. Modernization was also the key
hallmark across various economic and cultural areas from the 1910s to the 1930s, which led to the academic
realism of de la Rosa and Amorsolo becoming outmoded, and producing the first stirrings of Modern Art under
Victorio Edades. These stylistic transitions figured more prominently in the public eye through the flourishing of
the design of reliefs and statuary in public monuments and public buildings, and the interior decoration of movie
theaters, public buildings, and schools. The two major stylistic movements from the West, Art Nouveau (1907-24)
and Art Deco (1925-50), were to find abundant articulation through the use of design motifs. These included the
whiplash, floral-and-vine themes, and the sinuousness of sculpted bodies for Art Nouveau; and the rhythmic
diagonal lines, cubistic compositions, geometric patterns, and the rigid anatomies of Art Deco. The American
propensity for neoclassicism combined with the Beaux-Arts and City Beautiful Movements as encoded through the
Federal Style also served to influence Philippine public art with a formality and allegorical representation that
were seen plentifully in Manila and other provincial capitals.
Vicente Rivera y Mir, Bahay Kubo, 1924 (Photo courtesy of Leon Gallery)
Initially, the convening of the Philippine Assembly allowed the opportunity for advocates to reopen the classical
academia under American suzerainty. Act 1870, which incorporated the University of the Philippines in 1908, was
enacted. Through the lobbying of Pedro Paterno, it included the formation of the Escuela de Bellas Artes (School
of Fine Arts) as a unit of the university. This opened on 18 Jun 1909 in the house-studio of Rafael Enriquez on Calle
San Sebastian (now R. Hidalgo St), Quiapo. Also in 1908, an organization called the Asociacion Internacional de
Artistas de Manila (International Association of Manila Artists) was formed. This Manila-based circle of Filipino
and foreign artists was composed of Jose Ma. Asuncion, Teodoro Buenaventura, Armando Camps, Vicente
Francisco, Agusto Fuster, Antonio Garcia Granda, Patricio Gaston O’Farrell, Joaquin Ma. Herrer, Henry T. Levy, Jorge
Pineda, Vicente Rivera y Mir, Luis Viejo, and Miguel Zaragoza, with Rafael Enriquez as their titular head (Pilar in
Labrador 2007, 82). The organization was set up to sponsor a major exhibition at the Bazaar Filipino in Escolta,
timed to coincide with the port call of the US Navy’s Pacific squadron in Manila in Nov-Dec 1908. The exhibition
included works of all the members of the association, as well as those by Luna and Hidalgo. At the exhibition’s
competition, Vicente Rivera y Mir and Patricio Gaston O’Farrell won first prizes for El Sueño Dorado (The Golden
Dream) and Portrait of Marie Blocquel Vda. de O’Farrell, respectively; while Teodoro Buenaventura, Ramon
Peralta, Jorge Pineda, and a young Fernando Amorsolo received second prizes. With the opening of the UP Escuela
de Bellas Artes under Enriquez, former members of the Escuela Superior were also hired as new faculty. They
initially included Jose Ma. Asuncion (who also served as its founding college secretary), Teodoro Buenaventura,
Vicente Francisco, Antonio Garcia, Joaquin Ma. Herrer, Vicente Rivera, and Miguel Zaragoza. Fabian de la Rosa left
for a pensionado scholarship to Europe in 1908-10, and upon returning also joined the faculty. Enriquez would
continue serving as the director until 1925. Enriquez would be replaced by de la Rosa, who would serve as director
until his own retirement in 1935. The first batch of students graduated in 1914, composed of Doroteo Abaya
(painting), Fernando Amorsolo (painting), Domingo Celis (painting), Tomas Culliel (engraving), Horacio Reyes
(sculpture), and Narciso Reyes (painting). In 1935, when the UP School of Fine Arts (the Spanish name was
Anglicized by the 1920s) faculty posed for a group photo in its new quarters at Villamor Hall, UP Padre Faura, its
faculty included Fabian de la Rosa, Ambrocio Morales, Ramon Peralta, Guillermo Tolentino, Fernando Amorsolo,
Toribio Hererra, Irineo Miranda, Pablo Amorsolo, Teodoro Buenaventura, and Vicente Rivera (Roces 1975;
Castañeda 1964; Pilar 1992; Labrador 2007).
1924 Manila Carnival poster by Fernando

Amorsolo (Copyright owned by Fernando C.
Amorsolo Art Foundation, Inc; photo from
Amorsolo: 1892-1972 by Alfredo Roces.
Filipinas Foundation, Inc, 1975.)
Aside from UP, a major venue for the development of the visual arts was the annual Manila Carnival, started in Feb
1908 and held until 1938 at the Luneta. A combination of a temporary theme park, beauty pageant, concert ground,
trade fair, and exhibition venue, the Manila Carnival was the Insular Government’s way of pacifying the colonial
urban citizenry with spectacle and the display of plenty from the various provinces. Designing posters and print
paraphernalia for the Manila Carnival was a highly prestigious commission, and artists like Jorge Pineda and
Fernando Amorsolo established their popular reputations via this venue. Patricio Gaston O’Farrell, who
participated as a painter as well as a commercial exhibitor, won art prizes at the carnivals of 1921, 1922, and 1927,
aside from a prize for a patented coconut oil product in 1934. Private commissions for sculptures from the 1910s to
the 1930s consisted primarily of funerary sculptures for tombs and mausoleums. The Palma Tomb at North
Cemetery was designed by Guillermo Tolentino in 1915. Tolentino also did several funerary sculptural projects in
Laguna from 1918 to 1919 under contractor Tomas Zamora. Tabletop sculptures for elite patrons was another, less
accessible market. Wood-carvers of academic genre subjects like Graciano Nepomuceno were the most sought-
after sculptors, particularly of farming scenes and native sports like Sipa, undated, as well as scenes from Jose
Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not) and El Filibusterismo (Subversion). Another prominent sculptor was
Vidal Tampinco. Tolentino’s bronze Filipinas Bound showcases the classical realism of his studies of Roman
classic figuration (Castañeda 1964; Paras-Perez 1976; Pilar 1992).
The emergence of cacique-dominated local elite also allowed for a renewal of political-economic relations with
the Church, which now depended upon the infusion of new capital investments and patrons under the new Filipino
elite dispensation. This resulted in the opening up of Filipino capital to such areas as the purchase of former friar
lands as dispensed by the Insular Government in 1904, and the continuation and expansion of principalia
patronage via the carrozas and church decorations to newer generations of Filipino upper-middle class. Thus
despite the loss of state sponsorship, religious painting and sculpture under the Catholic Church continued to
thrive from 1910 to 1930 due to the rise of upper-middle-class incomes (which viewed owning carroza-mounted
santos as an important social status indicator) and the renewal of a mainly Filipino-run Church with American
bishops presiding. Besides rural examples—like Juan Senson and Pedro Piñon’s painted or sculpted icons in
Angono, or the Canuto Avila–Raymundo Francia church ceiling commissions in Bohol and Cebu—the Manila-
based santeros or icon carvers for wooden and/or ivory santos carried atop elaborately festooned carrozas
during religious processions continued production, primarily from workshops in Quiapo and Santa Cruz. Those of
Maximo Vicente and Graciano Nepomuceno were the most famous, with Vicente doing the prewar carroza of the
La Naval de Manila and Nepomuceno doing the Tercera Caida (Third Fall) of the Potenciano family of Biñan,
Laguna.
Ramon Martinez, La Madre Filipina, in Rizal Park, Manila

(Photo by Kiko del Rosario)
Through the Philippine Commission via Act 203 in 1901, monumental sculpture and public art received a boost with
the inauguration of the Rizal Monument at the Luneta on 30 Dec 1913. This was designed by Swiss sculptor
Richard Kissling who won second prize in the competition but, unlike the no-show winner, Italian sculptor Carlos
Nicoli, was able to post the performance bond. The monument, whose design was titled Motto Stella, contained
a sculptural tableau with Rizal as focal point. Rizal’s figure faces west to Manila Bay with genre figures to its sides,
and a large sheaf of bananas at its rear. A sloping base leads to its central pylon embedded with three stars.
Motto Stella inspired sculptors from around the country to reproduce Kissling’s design of the bronze statue of
Rizal wearing an overcoat and carrying a book in one hand. These translations of Kissling’s design used reinforced
concrete in the public plazas of towns and cities throughout the 1910s to the 1930s. Among the more notable
examples of these are the Rizal Monuments of Baliwag, Bulacan; Sorsogon, Sorsogon; Carcar City; and Naga
City. Used to decorate public buildings, schools, and plazas in the 1910s to the 1920s, the demand for busts of Rizal
and other heroic figures, like Marcelo del Pilar, Apolinario Mabini, and Gregorio del Pilar, constituted a market that
energized the sculptors of Santa Cruz and Quiapo, Manila, particularly the workshops of Ramon Martinez, Eulogio
Garcia, and Vidal Tampinco, with assistants coming from the faculty and graduates of the UP Escuela de Bellas
Artes. Among the latter were Ambrocio Morales, Severino Fabie, V. Barrientos, and Guillermo Tolentino. Similarly,
when the new public structures in Manila, such as Juan Arellano’s Jones Bridge (1917, destroyed 1945) and the
Legislative Building (1925, destroyed 1945), or the new UP Campus along Padre Faura were being finished from
1925 to 1935, their sculptural facade and pedestal designs required sculptors versed in using reinforced concrete.
Ramon Martinez sculpted the allegorical figures titled La Madre Filipina (Filipino Mother) on the monumental
socles of the Jones Bridge. These are currently found at the Rizal Park and the Manila Court of Appeals Building.
Vidal Tampinco designed the sculptural program at the Legislative Building, particularly the allegorical figures at
the central pediment. On the other hand, Vicente Francisco undertook the sculptural program of UP Padre Faura’s
Quadrangle from 1925 to 1930, with pedestaled works titled Education and Youth, Agriculture, and Law. In 1935,
Guillermo Tolentino would decorate the podium of UP Padre Faura’s Villamor Hall with the statues titled Painting
and Music (Lico 2008, 282-87). All this public ornamentation was undertaken using the Beaux Arts style. In 1927-
29, the Italian migrant sculptor Francesco Monti undertook the sculptural program at the Metropolitan Theater
using an Art Deco style, as demonstrated in the famed veiled dancers on its cornice, and Adam and Eve at the
main staircase. Monti also designed the sculptural facade of the old Meralco Building along San Marcelino St
(demolished 2014), and the series of saints at the cornice of the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Main Building. In
1931, the Bonifacio Monument by Tolentino was unveiled at Grace Park, Caloocan. It had a sculptural tableau that
featured the events from 1872, such as the execution of Fathers Jose Burgos, Jacinto Zamora, and Mariano Gomez
or the GomBurZa, to the 1896 Katipunan Revolution, with Bonifacio at its head flanked by Emilio Jacinto and other
revolutionaries. Tolentino’s sculptural focus on revolutionary sacrifice and martyrdom would be complemented
with the unveiling on 30 Nov 1935 of the reinforced concrete statue titled Oblation at the UP Padre Faura
Quadrangle.
The repatriation from Europe of artworks by Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo (who died in 1913) would
also occur in this period. Many of their works would either be kept by their heirs, which was the case for Andres
Luna de San Pedro, who himself was a successful architect, or end up in the hands of private collectors, chief
among them Alfonso T. Ongpin, a pioneering connoisseur and art dealer in the 1930s (Galang 1939).
Emilio Alvero, Table Delicacies, 1928, UP Vargas Museum Collection
In the area of scenography and interior painting, Juan Abelardo, Ramon Peralta, Toribio Antillon, and Emilio Alvero
were engaged for commissions to decorate prominent homes with paintings executed on walls and ceilings. In
particular, Alvero was famed as a master of the bodegon, or still life painting. His bodegon paintings on the walls
of the 1911 renovated house of Gen Antonio Bautista in Malolos are some of the few remaining works attributed to
him. Outside Manila, the church interior muralists based in Cebu, such as Raymundo Francia and Canuto Avila,
once more decorated church ceilings throughout Cebu and Bohol from 1920 to 1941. In Angono, the devotional
paintings of Juan Senson, and santo statuary by Pedro Piñon continued to be generated for local consumption
from the 1900s to the mid-1920s; while next-generation Angono natives, like the UP-educated Moises Villaluz,
worked in the Laguna Lake area of Los Baños. In 1929, Fernando Amorsolo was commissioned to paint two murals
for the Metropolitan Theater, Music and Dance. The results bore a combination of his academic style of dramatic
chiaroscuro contrasts, as well as an increasing focus on traditional ethnographic motifs and precolonial imagery.
In the early 1930s, the designs of American muralist Eugene Francis Savage became a major influence in the works
of emerging painters like Enrique J. L. Ruiz, who studied under Savage at Yale University. Ruiz decorated several
theaters in Manila and the Manila Hotel using the Savage style and displayed two panels of the same style at the
1934 Manila Carnival (Castañeda 1964; Roces 1975; Savellon and Abaquita 2004; Saguinsin 2006).
Ramon Peralta, Tirad Pass: Ably Defended by General Gregorio del Pilar, 1931, University of the
Philippines Main Library Collection (Photo by Kiko del Rosario)
In landscape painting, the works of the elderly Teodoro Buenaventura, who continued to paint rural landscapes in
the academic tradition, would be supplemented by that of Isidro Ancheta. Ancheta was known for pioneering a
mass-production method of landscape painting to sell to tourists in the 1930s, while Ramon Peralta painted
historical subjects like Llegado de Magallanes a Cebu, or nationalistic themes like Tirad Pass. Juan Abelardo also
did landscapes in addition to interiors, mostly around San Miguel de Mayumo and Sibul (Castañeda 1964, 79-84).
From the mid-1920s to the 1930s, Miguel Zaragoza, Patricio Gaston O’Farrell, and Jorge Pineda would return to
landscape painting as a means of self-fulfillment, using an academic style akin to the plein air painting of the
Barbizon School. In addition, seascapes became an increasing area of concern, as the early works of Alfredo
Carmelo from 1935 onward would prove. As early as 1916, post-Impressionist landscapes of the Marikina River
area were already being painted by Juan Arellano. However, this early modernist rendering of Philippine
landscape would not expand until the arrival from studies abroad by Victorio Edades in 1928 and Diosdado
Lorenzo in 1935.
Portraiture continued to be an important field in both painting and sculpture. Rafael Enriquez is among the more
prominent painting portraitists, though only an oil portrait of Jose Rizal from 1927, the year of his death, is now
known to survive. It now hangs at the office of the UP president. Among Fabian de la Rosa’s portraits of prominent
politicians were those of Gen Leonard Wood, 1910; Woodrow Wilson, 1913; William Atkinson Jones, undated; and
Manuel and Aurora Aragon Quezon, 1927. Among the next generation after de la Rosa, it was the dominant
influence of Fernando Amorsolo in painting that could be seen in portraiture from the mid-1910s to the mid-1930s.
Among Amorsolo’s early portraits is that of Fernanda de Jesus, 1915, in which the ideal of the rural lass, carrying a
bamboo tray full of flowers, signals a transformation of the austerely formal academic realist depiction to a softer,
more organic rendering of nature, humanity, and sunlight. The academic tradition of darkened backgrounds, light
streaming upon the sitter as if suddenly illuminated by a camera flash, could still be seen in Amorsolo portraits
like Portrait of a Katipunero, 1917, and Portrait of Mrs. Sonia Rifkin, 1930. But in others—such as his famed
portrait of his first wife, Salud Jorge, 1920 (destroyed in 1945); Portrait of Juanita Esten, 1927; and in particular,
Portrait of Felicing Tirona, 1935—light has become a more dominant element. Native costume and the rural
outdoors, in the case of the Tirona portrait, also become major indicators of Filipino national affiliation (Castañeda
1984; Roces 1975; Amorsolo and Pilar 2008).
Pablo Amorsolo, Piro, 1930, UP Vargas Museum

Collection
This period is especially noted for the dramatic expansion of genre scenes in painting. Fabian de la Rosa and Jorge
Pineda started this trend with their scenes of farmers planting rice, local craftspeople like lantern makers and hat
makers working at their trade, and the playing of local games. By the early 1920s, this would be expanded via the
work of Amorsolo, who returned from his pensionado grant to Spain and the United States. Amorsolo’s 1921 and
1924 versions of Planting Rice and the 1922 and 1925 versions of Harvest Time in Pinaglabanan demonstrated a
shift from de la Rosa’s use of subtle lighting and demure figuration set in the far countryside to that which
privileged an increasing emphasis on physical virility, sensuality, and the dramatic illumination of tropical sunlight
set in the suburbs of Manila. The multiple versions of these themes, where subtle variations of composition and
lighting set them apart from one another, were harbingers of the enormous and consistent output of Amorsolo as
a rural genre painter. His economic and stylistic dominance were assured via his popularity among foreign
collectors in international exhibitions, such as the one mounted in Art Center Gallery in New York City, 1925; the
Grand Central Art Gallery, also in New York City, 1929; and the Paris Exposition Coloniale Internationale, 1931. By
the early 1930s, the dominance of Amorsolo’s genre paintings created two approaches among the practice of his
so-called conservative followers. One was characterized by the disavowal of the formula of brightly lit rural genre
scenes, and instead focusing on an earlier style associated with Fabian de la Rosa; while the second imitated
Amorsolo to satisfy the large public demand for this kind of rural genre painting. Among proponents of the first
would count Fernando’s younger brother Pablo Amorsolo, who would decorate the Ocampo mansion in Quiapo
with historical murals characterized by an illustrational hard-edged line similarly used by pre-Raphaelite artists.
Among proponents of the second approach were Jose Pereira, Irineo Miranda, Severino Fabie, Antonio Llamas
Garcia, and Dominador Castañeda, whose paintings all bore similarities to Amorsolo’s subjects and themes. The
works of these artists, alongside of their mentors like Vicente Rivera, Toribio Herrera, and Jorge Pineda, would
constitute the mass market of idyllic genre paintings of contented farmers, peaceful pictures of the countryside,
and generic scenes of farming and fishing communities that would be labeled “conservative” in the years to come
(Castañeda 1964; Roces 1975; Pilar 1992).
The expansion of print capitalism in the country, manifested in both Spanish and English language weekly
magazines like Lipang Kalabaw, Philippines Free Press, and El Renacimiento, or dailies like The Independent,
also resulted in more opportunities to do illustration work for editorial cartoons and cover feature artworks.
Besides Pineda aka Makahiya, other famous illustrators of the period 1908-35 would include Jose Pereira for
Philippines Free Press and Fernando Amorsolo for The Independent. The nature of their illustration work was
informed by their academic training: those of Makahiya appeared as graphic versions of accomplished paintings
where commentaries were telegraphed at the bottom; those of Amorsolo were crisp, concise characterizations of
major figures who were prominently featured, often devoid of background detailing, and featured small balloon-
encased texts; while Pereira maximized the space of the illustration with deeply crosshatched chiaroscuro
contrasts, the main figures dominating the space, and bold-faced texts wrapped in cubistic balloons. Starting from
the mid-1930s, they would be joined by Esmeraldo Izon and Demetrio Diego. Besides weeklies, special print
illustrations also beckoned. The most famous is Guillermo Tolentino’s Filipinos Ilustres (Illustrious Filipinos), 1911,
a fictive group portrait of the heroes and martyrs of the Katipunan revolution. This was translated into a lithograph
by Pineda and printed by Carmelo and Bauermann. Commercial design for corporate products was also a
prominent area of visual art that bloomed in this period. Fernando Amorsolo was a dominant practitioner from
1916 to 1925 by virtue of his art directorship of the Pacific Commercial Company, and responsible for designing
various ads, such as the famous Ginebra San Miguel label Markang Demonyo (Mark of the Demon), 1917, and that
of Ivory soap. In book illustration, both Fernando and Pablo Amorsolo would also be favored for their depictions
of country life, folktales and proverbs, and historical episodes, particularly in The Philippine Reader series by
Camilo Osias, first published in 1932 (Paras-Perez 1976; McCoy and Roces 1985; Cañete 2012, 142; Amorsolo and
Pilar 2008).
Carlos V. Francisco, Angelus, University of Santo Tomas Museum Collection
In December 1928, Victorio C. Edades, then recently returned from his studies at the University of Washington,
mounted a solo exhibition at the Columbian Club in Manila. The expressionistic colors and renditions of his
American period works as seen in The Builders and The Sketch, 1928, unleashed a barrage of criticism leveled by
conservative art critics like Ariston Estrada. Conversely, he was supported by pro-modernist writers like the artist
Gregorio Paredes (Reyes 1989). In particular, The Builders elicited negative comments because of its brutalist and
distorted depiction of human laborers in a stone quarry or construction site. The emphasis on formal composition,
with the mural’s distribution of human laborers and stones set as interlocking pieces of shapes and hues of light
and dark like a cubic, thickly painted jigsaw puzzle ignoring singular perspective and naturalistic anatomy,
alienated a public accustomed to the academic fantasy of rural genres that successive generations of artists from
Fabian de la Rosa to Fernando Amorsolo popularized. In 1934, Edades formed a group called the Triumvirate,
composed of himself, Galo B. Ocampo, and Carlos V. Francisco, to execute mural commissions using an Art
Deco/modernist style for projects by Juan Nakpil. This included Rising Philippines, 1934 (destroyed 1945), which
decorated the lobby of the Capitol Theater in Escolta. This was a pioneering Philippine Modern mural design that
utilized multiple perspectives and a flat tapestry-like design inspired from both American Regionalist as well as
Mexican Social Realist murals. Dominated by a figure of a woman in white representing the Philippines, ascending
vertically from the lower left to upper right of the canvas, Rising Philippines legitimized the claims of artistic
ascendancy among Edades’s circle, which was confirmed via the commissioned paintings of elite clients like the
Rufino family and Pres Manuel L. Quezon, whose mansion on Roberts St, Pasay, was decorated by the Triumvirate.
Another collaborative work is Mother Nature’s Bounty, 1935, which shows the developing concern of artists for
planar composition dominated by curvilinear lines and organic planes. Of the three, it would be Carlos Francisco,
called Botong, who would develop the visuality of Philippine Modern Art through muralism and a renewed focus
on historical episodes, as well as rural genre. The latter is poignantly demonstrated in his undated Angelus. Two
events in 1935 also strengthened the modernists’ hand in their developing discursive drive to supplant the
conservatives: first, the opening of the UST School of Fine Arts at Sampaloc, with Edades as its director, and
Ocampo and Francisco among its pioneering faculty; and second, the arrival of Diosdado Lorenzo from his studies
in Italy. Lorenzo brought with him a thickly impastoed palette inspired by encounters with the Italian Macchiaioli
School. Lorenzo’s 1935 solo exhibit at the Philippine Columbian Club was, by contrast, well received for his
depiction of rural scenes and portraits using this technique (Kalaw-Ledesma and Guerrero 1981; Ty-Navarro 1985;
Guillermo 1986, 2009; Reyes 1989; Flores 2010).
The Philippine Commonwealth Period (1936-41)
With the proclamation of the Philippine Commonwealth Republic on 15 Nov 1935 under Pres Manuel L. Quezon
and Vice Pres Sergio Osmeña Sr, the 10-year countdown toward full Philippine independence began. Although
governance, jurisprudence, and legislation were now exclusively held by Filipinos, foreign policy and national
defense were still American spheres of concern, subject to final decisions from Washington. The outlines of a
cacique democracy had already been fleshed out in the previous two decades since the Philippine Assembly
period, but its negative effects on the countryside began to be felt as landlords began to impose exorbitant
harvest quotas on planters as peasants and landless farmers agitated for genuine land reform (Kerkvliet 1979).
Agricultural revolts, such as the May 1935 Sakdalista Revolt, had already agitated the countryside. Nonetheless,
the special relations quota of cash crops and the gold exports to the USA had financially kept the upper middle
class afloat to an extent that this blinded them to increasing class inequalities. Tensions over Japan’s increasingly
assertive military expansionism also required the mobilization of Filipinos under Gen Douglas MacArthur to form
the bulk of the US Army Forces in the Far East in 1941. Comforted by a false sense of security provided by the
Americans, the Filipino elite and upper middle class consumed vast amounts of imported goods, and were also
increasingly open to modern ideas on art—or at least those legitimated in the USA, like Regionalism and Mexican
Social Realism. The Jazz Moderne phase of Art Deco, with its streamlined “steamship” aesthetics, became a
popular style that was translated into furniture design (notably, Juan Nakpil’s Ambassador Chair for Puyat &
Sons), fashion, and industrial design. Despite this mania for international trends, the nativist national cultural
movement gained full steam with the dominance of Jorge Bocobo as UP president (1935-39) and later education
secretary (1939-41). This was particularly made manifest in the pioneering documentation of Philippine traditional
and folk art by UP-based scholars like Francisca Reyes (later Mrs Aquino), as well as the decision to categorically
make Filipino the national language heavily drawing from Tagalog as linguistic base. This was a move affirmed by
Quezon in 1937.
Victorio Edades, Bulul at Babae, ca 1930, UP Vargas

Museum Collection
It was the combination of Modernism with nativism that saw the development of a hybrid genre subject, the
modernist depiction of native women. Victorio Edades’s Bulul at Babae (Bulul and Woman), undated, and Galo B.
Ocampo’s Brown Madonna, 1938, are typical of this movement. Both espouse post-Impressionist and
Expressionist techniques such as the use of blocklike brown-skinned figures as seen in the works of Paul Gauguin,
alongside the employment of a series of curvilinear patterns that flatten into tapestry-like designs. Even in scenic
painting, the modernist influence could be seen in the work of Vicente Alvarez Dizon. In After the Day’s Toil, 1938,
he used smooth curvilinear lines and flattened planes. This was Dizon’s Yale University master’s thesis under
Eugene Savage. This work won first prize at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition at San Francisco.
Francisco’s two murals for the UST Main Building, jointly titled Introduction of Christianity in the Philippines,
1939-40, favors an even flatter use of planar surface. While thematic emphasis is placed on the human figures,
they are interrelated with background elements via the introduction of a flowing series of curved lines, a visual
feature that would become prominent in Botong’s works in the years to come. The increasing debates between
conservatives and moderns also began in the period between 1934 and 1939 in various weekly journals and
newsletters. This was a consequence of the initial debates following Edades’s 1928 solo exhibition at the
Philippine Columbian Club, where his Expressionist paintings were derided by critics like Ariston Estrada for being
“ugly” and “not fit to be seen by children and women in the family way.” Edades fought back with articles asserting
that Modernism was a natural progression from Classical Art of the Greeks and Romans, while Conservatism was
simply content to repeat the academic formulas of the 19th century. Edades would be joined by Galo B. Ocampo in
1935 and would receive support from such writers as Salvador P. Lopez (who defended the peasantry depictions of
Galo Ocampo, Edades, and Carlos Francisco in a pioneering article about proletarian art in the Philippines) and
the Veronicans, which included Francisco Arcellana and Hernando Ruiz Ocampo, the latter inspired by the
Triumvirate to paint his own proletarian period paintings. This circle of avant-garde writers that met at the Ivory
Tower café on Herran St would foster an intelligentsia that was sympathetic to Modernism in the years to come
(Castañeda 1964; Ty-Navarro 1985; Pilar 1992; Amorsolo and Pilar 2008).
However, the dominance of Fernando Amorsolo as the premiere painter of the Commonwealth period would be
confirmed by his 1936 official portrait of President Quezon, as well as portraits of other major figures like US
Resident Commissioner Paul McNutt and Executive Secretary Jorge Vargas. It would also be at this time that the
followers of Amorsolo, such as Ramon Peralta, Irineo Miranda, and Dominador Castañeda, would expand upon
the visual language of genre works through their specialization on specific subject matter: for Miranda, persons in
contemporary dress and situations; for Castañeda and Peralta, rural landscape. Starting in the early 1940s, they
would be joined by Simon Saulog, Miguel Galvez, Elias Laxa, and Crispin Lopez, whose works catered to both elite
collectors like Jorge Vargas and Aurelio Alvero, as well as foreign tourists thronging Manila at the eve of war.
These artists would form the nucleus of the conservative painters who would confront the modernists in the
postwar period. At the time, their studios and shops were still distributed in a loose constellation starting from
Quiapo, Santa Cruz, San Nicolas, and Intramuros all the way to Tondo.
It was now up to a second generation of artists schooled by Edades, Ocampo, and Francisco at UST to propel the
discursive shift further. They would work in parallel to Lorenzo, Edades, and Ocampo at the short-lived Atelier of
Modern Art (1938-41). In 1939, confident that enough artists had taken up Modernism as their aesthetic lodestone
via their training at the Atelier of Modern Art (yet apparently without consulting the individuals named), Edades
declared the existence of the Thirteen Moderns of Philippine Art. They were Arsenio Capili, Bonifacio Cristobal,
Demetrio Diego, Edades himself, Carlos V. Francisco, Cesar Legaspi, Diosdado Lorenzo, Anita Magsaysay (née Ho),
Vicente Manansala, Galo B. Ocampo, Hernando R. Ocampo, Jose Pardo, and Ricarte Puruganan. The closing of the
Atelier of Modern Art after the first Japanese air attacks on Manila on 8 Dec 1941 would end the prewar stage of
Philippine Modernism. The verbal confrontations would be recapitulated after World War II (Bautista 1992;
Guillermo 2009; Cañete 1999).
 Written by Reuben Ramas Cañete
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This article is from the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art Digital Edition.
Title: American Traditions and Transformations in Philippine Visual Arts (1900 Onward)
Author/s: Reuben Ramas Cañete
URL:
Publication Date: November 18, 2020
Access Date: February 15, 2022
Copyright © 2020 by Cultural Center of the Philippines
All rights reserved. Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) is the sole and exclusive distributor of the Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (EPA)
Digital Edition. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including
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2/15/22, 4:26 PM American Traditions and Transformations in Philippine Visual Arts (1900 Onward)

Cultural Center of the Philippines

American Traditions and Transformations in

The American Military and Civilian Commission Period

Fabian de la Rosa, Riverview of Santa Ana, UP Vargas Museum Collection

Filipinos Ilustres, a lithographic print by Jorge Pineda based on a composite drawing by

The Philippine Assembly Period (1907-35)

1924 Manila Carnival poster by Fernando

Ramon Martinez, La Madre Filipina, in Rizal Park, Manila

Emilio Alvero, Table Delicacies, 1928, UP Vargas Museum Collection

Pablo Amorsolo, Piro, 1930, UP Vargas Museum

Carlos V. Francisco, Angelus, University of Santo Tomas Museum Collection

The Philippine Commonwealth Period (1936-41)

Victorio Edades, Bulul at Babae, ca 1930, UP Vargas

 Written by Reuben Ramas Cañete

Roces, Alfredo R. 1975. Amorsolo (1892-1972). Makati: Filipinas Foundation.

Copyright © 2020 by Cultural Center of the Philippines

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