PROJECT

IN
HUMANITIES
Clarissa Estolloso
BSA-II
Ramon Abellana
Dr. Ramon Alcoseba Abellana. (February 5, 1911 - November 5, 2001)
Was a Cebuano sculptor and composer from Carcar. Born on February
5, 1911. He learned sculpture from his grandfather, Gonzalo and from his
father, Teofilo, who was also a school principal and sculptor. He pursued
dentistry as a profession. He compared making dental impressions to
sculpting. An artist by heart, apart from practicing his dental profession, he
was also making sculptures. His first commissioned work was the Carcar
landmark, "Rotunda" based on the sketches of his brother, Martino Abellana.
Together with his brother, Manuel, he sculpted the figures. He also carved
two life-sized statues: Lapu-lapu and Sergio Osmea Sr. ,.both can be seen at
the grounds of Cebu City Capitol.
His passion for music inspired him to compose several Visayan songs such as
Kwahaw, Saloma, Katahum sa Yamog (How Lovely the Morning Dew) and
Lapiyahan.

Rey Paz Contreras

Rey Paz Contreras (born August 31, 1950) is a prominent
Filipino sculptor working with urban refuse and environmental materials as
artistic media. He is inspired by the indigenous Filipino culture and creates
visual forms of contemporary images that explore a distinct Filipino
aesthetics.[1]
Rey Paz Contreras was born in Paraaque, south of Manila, and grew up in a
house by the railway tracks in the crowded urban district of Tayuman. When
the railway company decided to replace the old wooden railroad sleepers,
some of them 100 years old and severely damaged, Contreras bought the
wood and began using it to create wooden objects. At first these were
functional objects such as bowls, often reflecting irregularities in the wood.
Contreras' sculpture often still has a functional aspect.[1]

Through the years, Contreras has experimented on non-traditional art

materials in his quest for contemporary Filipino art. Aside from the travieza,
he explored using logging refuse (roots and branches) in order to pave way
for reforestation efforts and to help organize backyard industry to onion
farmers who supplied and eventually were trained to use the hardwood
refuse salvaged from the river as art material. After the devastating Mount
Pinatubo eruption, Contreras experimented on using the volcanic rocks and
lahar to sculpt human figures reminiscent of the indigenous Aeta and lowland
communities who were displaced by the volcanic eruption; these stone
sculptures were exhibited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, paving
way for further exploration of the volcanic materials as art media.

As an artist, Contreras is also a pioneering spirit in the development of

community-based people's art. He has conducted workshops in the provinces
and has organized self-sustaining community craft-based art groups such as
Cadaclan Carvers in Pantabangan, Nueva Ecija, Malasiqui carvers in
Pangasinan and more recently the Banglos Art Group in Quezon Province; he
has taught woodcarving on other provinces such as Capiz, Rizal and Abra. He
has also been supportive of progressive religious organizations, most notable
is his partnership with the Missionaries of Jesus (MJ). Some of the more
popular public art of Contreras can be found on chapels like Calaruega and
Chapel on the Hill in Batulao, Batangas (near Tagaytay); his work in Sagada,
Mountain Province is found inside the Episcopalian Church.

Contreras currently has his studio near the railroad tracks in Tondo, Manila,
where he conducts his community-based art training to promote a socially-
responsive 'people's art' that has developed into the Daambakal Sculptors
Collective. Contreras' pioneered the use of travieza or hardwood railroad
tracks during the late 70s.

Arturo R. 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.[2
David Medalla
David Medalla (born 1942) is a Filipino international artist. His work ranges
from sculpture and kinetic art to painting, installation and performance art.
He lives and works in London, New York City and Paris.

Medalla was born in Manila, the Philippines, in 1942. At the age of 12 he was
admitted at Columbia University in New York upon the recommendation of
American poet Mark van Doren, and he studied ancient Greek drama
with Moses Hadas, modern drama with Eric Bentley, modern literature
with Lionel Trilling, modern philosophy with John Randall and attended the
poetry workshops of Lonie Adams.

In the late 1950s he returned to Manila and met Jaime Gil de Biedma (the
Spanish poet) and the painter Fernando Zbel de Ayala, who became the
earliest patrons of his art. In the 1960s in Paris, the French
philosopher Gaston Bachelard introduced his performance 'Brother of Isidora'
at the Academy of Raymond Duncan, later, Louis Aragon would introduce
another performance and finally, Marcel Duchamp honoured him with a
'medallic' object.

His work was included in Harald Szeemann's exhibition 'Weiss auf Weiss'
(1966) and 'Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form' (1969) and in
the DOCUMENTA 5 exhibition in 1972 in Kassel.

In the early 1960s he moved to the United Kingdom and co-founded the
Signals Gallery in London in 1964, which presented international kinetic art.
He was editor of the Signals news bulletin from 1964 to 1966. In 1967 he
initiated the Exploding Galaxy, an international confluence of multi-media
artists, significant in hippie/counterculture circles, particularly the UFO
Club and Arts Lab. From 1974 to 1977 he was chairman of Artists for
Democracy, an organisation dedicated to 'giving material and cultural
support to liberation movements worldwide' and director of the Fitzrovia
Cultural Centre in London.

In New York, in 1994, he founded the Mondrian Fan Club with Adam
Nankervis as vice-president.[1]

Between 1 January 1995 and 14 February 1995 David Medalla rented a space
at 55 Gee Street, London, in which he lived and exhibited. He exhibited
seven new versions of his biokinetic constructions of the sixties (bubble
machines; and a monumental sand machine). These machines were
constructed after Medalla's original designs, by the English artist Dan
Chadwick. The exhibition also featured large-scale prints of his New York
'Mondrian Events' with Adam Nankervis, and five large oil paintings on
canvas created by David Medalla in situ at 55 Gee Street. Another important
feature was a monumental animated neon relief entitled 'Kinetic Mudras
for Piet Mondrian' constructed by Frances Basham using argon and neon
lighting after Medalla's original idea and designs.[2] Medalla also invited
artists to perform at the space.

David Medalla has lectured at the Sorbonne, the cole des Beaux-Arts in
Paris, the Museum of Modern Art of New York, Silliman University and
the University of the Philippines, the Universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht,
the New York Public Library, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada,
the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, Warwick and
Southampton in England, the Slade School of Fine Art, St. Martin's.

He was the founder and director of the London Biennale in 1998, a do-it-
yourself free arts festival, which hosts work by Mai Ghoussoub, Mark
McGowan, Deej Fabyc, Marko Stepanov, Adam Nankervis, James
Moores, Dimitri Launder, Fritz Stolberg, Salih Kayra, Marisol Cavia, and many
others.

David Medalla has won awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts
and the Jerome Foundation of America. In 2016, he was shortlisted for the
inaugural Hepworth Prize for Sculpture.[3][4]

Napoleon Abueva
Napolen Isabelo Veloso Abueva (born January 26, 1930), more popularly
known as Napolen Abueva, is a Filipino artist. He is a sculptor given the
distinction as the Philippines' National Artist for Sculpture. He is also entitled
as the "Father of Modern Philippine Sculpture". He was awarded National
Artist of the Philippines in the field of Visual Arts.[1]

Bonifacio Flores Arvalo

Bonifacio Flores Arvalo (14 May 1850 13 December 1920) was
a Filipino ilustrado, dentist, sculptor, propagandist, and an ardent patron of
music and theater. He was the treasurer of La Liga Filipina and the founder of
the Sociedad Dental de Filipinas, which is now known as the Philippine
Dental Association.[1]

Anastacio Caedo
Anastacio Tanchauco Caedo (14 August 1907 12 May 1990) was a Filipino
sculptor. His style of sculpture was classical realist in the tradition of his
mentor, Guillermo Tolentino.

His best known works include the MacArthur Landing site in Palo Red Beach,
Leyte; the Benigno Aquino Monument which was originally at the corner of
Ayala Avenue and Paseo de Roxas in Makati; the Bonifacio Monument in
Pugad Lawin, Balintawak; and numerous statues of Jose Rizal, most notably
the ones displayed in Philippine embassies throughout the world. He
produced numerous commissioned representational sculptures mainly
monuments of national heroes and successful Filipino politicians,
businessmen, and educators.

Caedo is also notable for having refused the honor of being awarded
a National Artist of the Philippines - in 1983, 1984, and 1986.

Eduardo Castrillo
Eduardo Castrillo (October 31, 1942 May 18, 2016) was an award-
winning Filipino sculptor. He was born in Santa Ana, Manila, the youngest of
five children of Santiago Silva Castrillo, a jeweler, and Magdalena De Los
Santos, a leading actress in Zarzuelas and Holy
Week pageants in Makati, Philippines. Castrillo was a Republic Cultural
Heritage awardee. He was among the youngest TOYM Awardees, having
received the prestigious award at the age of 29. In the 1970, he was
generally considered the most avant garde sculptor and was labelled by a
publication as "the Phenomenon of Philippine Art". He was also a jewelry
artist and designer.

He died on May 18, 2016, at the Asian Hospital in Muntinlupa due to cancer.
[1]
Tomas Fernandez Concepcion
Tomas Fernandez Concepcion (November 4, 1933 - May 30, 2012) was a
Congressman in the Philippines House of Representatives and an artist best
known for his sculptures of Filipino Senator Benigno Aquino,
revolutionary Jose Rizal, and Pope John Paul II.

During the People Power Revolution of the 1980s, Concepcion joined

Movement for a Free Philippines, serving as point person for the
organizations branch in Italy, where he lived to work on his art.[1] His most
famous works have been sculptures of celebrated men, including one of
Aquino, in Peoples Park in Manila; Rizal, in Rome; John Paul II, in Guam;
and Pope Paul VI, in the Vatican.[2] According to House Resolution no. 2495,
introduced in his memory on June 7, 2012, Concepcion "was a highly
regarded artist ... with a socially conscious heart."[3] In 1992, Concepcion was
elected to the House of Representatives, where he served for four years as
Representative of the Labor Sector for the 9th Congress of the Philippines.
From that position, he defended the rights of overseas Filipino laborers. He
later moved back to Italy, where he spent the rest of his life working on his
artwork, including a bronze bust of U.S. President Barack Obama, which
Concepcion had hoped to present to the White House.[4]

Virginia Ty-Navarro

Virginia Ty-Navarro (born 1924)[1] is a Philippine artist sculptor, famously

known nationwide for her sculpture Statue of Our Lady Queen of Peace which
she completed in sixteen months and a 12 million peso budget.[2] The
sculpture is also called Our Lady of EDSA Shrine and is located in Ortigas. Ty-
Navarro took a course in Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas where
she studied under National Artist Carlos Botong Francisco[3] and National
Artist Victorio C. Edades during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.[4]
She is married to fellow artist Jerry Elizalde Navarro.[4]
Ty-Navarro works on metal sculptures,[5] such as bronze.[1] She follows a
modernist style in her art.[6] Some of her works are displayed at the National
Museum of the Philippines.[7]
Pelagia Mendoza y Gotianquin
Pelagia Mendoza y Gotianquin (18671939) was the first female sculptor in
the Philippines and was the first female student at the Escuela de Dibujo y
Pintura (Drawing and Painting School).[1][2]