The Filipino National Artist in Visual Arts

Fernando Amorsolo was born on May 30, 1892 in Paco, when Manila was still under Spanish sovereignty, to Pedro Amorsolo, a bookkeeper, and Bonifacia Cueto. Amorsolo spent his childhood in Daet, Camarines Norte, where he studied in a public school and was tutored at home in Spanish reading and writing. After his father’s death, Amorsolo and his family moved to Manila to live with Don Fabian de la Rosa, his mother's cousin and a Philippine painter. At the age of 13, Amorsolo became an apprentice to De la Rosa, who would eventually become the advocate and guide to Amorsolo's painting career. During this time, Amorsolo's mother embroidered to earn money, while Amorsolo helped by selling watercolor postcards to a local bookstore for 10 centavos each. Amorsolo's brother, Pablo, was also a painter.
Amorsolo's first success as a young painter came in 1908, when his painting Leyendo el periódico took second place at the Bazar Escolta, a contest organized by the Asociacion Internacional de Artistas.Between 1909 and 1914, Amorsolo enrolled at the Art School of the Liceo de Manila, where he earned honors for his paintings and drawings.
After graduating from the Liceo, he entered the University of the Philippines' School of Fine Arts, where De la Rosa worked at the time. During college, Fernando Amorsolo's primary influences were the Spanish court painter Diego Velazquez, John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, but mostly his contemporary Spanish masters Joaquín Sorolla Bastida and Ignacio Zuloaga. Amorsolo's most notable work as a student at the Liceo was his painting of a young man and a young woman in a garden, which won him the first prize in the art school exhibition during his graduation year. To make money during school, Amorsolo joined competitions and did illustrations for various Philippine publications, including Severino Reyes’ first novel in Tagalog, Parusa ng Diyos (God’s Punishment), and Iñigo Ed. Regalado's Madaling Araw (Dawn). He also illustrated for the religious Pasion books. Amorsolo graduated with medals from the University of the Philippines.

Amorsolo poster promoting liberty bonds, 1917
After graduating from the University of the Philippines, Amorsolo worked as a draftsman for the Bureau of Public Works, as a chief artist at the Pacific Commercial Company, and as a part-time instructor at the University of the Philippines (where he would work for 38 years). After three years as an instructor and commercial artist, Amorsolo was given a grant to study at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, Spain by Filipino businessman Enrique Zobel de Ayala. During his seven months in Spain, Amorsolo sketched at museums and along the streets of Madrid, experimenting with the use of light and color. Through De Ayala’s grant, Amorsolo was also able to visit New York, where he encountered postwar impressionism and cubism, which would be major influences on his work.
Amorsolo set up his own studio upon his return to Manila and painted prodigiously during the 1920s and the 1930s. His Rice Planting (1922), which appeared on posters and tourist brochures, became one of the most popular images of the Commonwealth era Beginning in the 1930s, Amorsolo's work was exhibited widely both in the Philippines and abroad. His optimistic, pastoral images set the tone for Philippine painting before World War II. Except for his darker World War II-era paintings, Amorsolo painted quiet and peaceful scenes throughout his career.
Amorsolo was sought after by influential Filipinos including Luis Araneta, Antonio Araneta and Jorge Vargas. Amorsolo also became the favorite Philippine artist of United States officials and visitors in the Philippines. Due to his popularity, Amorsolo had to resort to photographing his works and pasted and mounted them in an album. Prospective patrons could then choose from this catalogue of his works. Amorsolo did not create exact replicas of his trademark themes; he recreated the paintings by varying some elements.
His works later appeared on the cover and pages of children's textbooks, in novels, in commercial designs, in cartoons and illustrations for the Philippine publications such The Independent, Philippine Magazine, Telembang, El Renacimiento Filipino, and Excelsior. He was the director of the University of the Philippine’s College of Fine Arts from 1938 to 1952.

A memorial to Amorsolo near his grave in Marikina City
During the 1950s until his death in 1972, Amorsolo averaged to finishing 10 paintings a month. However, during his later years, diabetes, cataractarthritis, headaches, dizziness and the death of two sons affected the execution of his works. Amorsolo underwent a cataract operation when he was 70 years old, a surgery that did not impede him from drawing and painting.Two months after being confined at the St. Luke’s Hospital in Manila, Amorsolo died of heart failure on April 24, 1972 at the age of 79.
Four days after his death, Amorsolo was conferred as the First Philippine National Artist in Painting at the Cultural Center of the Philippines by Ferdinand E. Marcos.


During his lifetime, Amorsolo was married twice and had 14 children. In 1916, he married Salud Jorge, with whom he had six children.[10] After Jorge’s death in 1931, Amorsolo married Maria del Carmen Zaragoza, with whom he had eight more children. Among her daughters are Sylvia Amorsolo Lazo and Luz Amorsolo.Five of Amorsolo’s children became painters themselves. Amorsolo was a close friend to the Philippine sculptor Guillermo Tolentino, the creator of the Caloocan City monument for Philippine hero Andres Bonifacio.

The Filipino National Artist in Visual Arts

Napoleon Abueva, nicknamed Billy, was born on January 26, 1930 in Tagbilaran, Bohol to Teodoro Abueva, a Bohol congressman and Purificacion (Nena) Veloso, president of the Women’s Auxiliary Service. His father was a friend and contemporary of former Philippine President Manuel Roxas and Ambassador Narciso Ramos. He was a member of the Provincial Board, and later became the Provincial Governor of Bohol. He ended his career as a Congressman in 1934. Both of Abueva's parents died serving their country.
Abueva has six other brothers and sisters: Teodoro (Teddy), Jr., now based in New York, USA; Purificacion (Neny -deceased), married to Atty. Ramon Binamira (dec.) of Tagbilaran City; Jose Abueva (Pepe) former president of the University of the Philippines; Amelia Martinez (Inday), now living in Chicago Teresita (Ching)Floro, now living in Sydney, Australia; and Antonio (Tony), a landscape artist who met a tragic fate aboard Princess of the Orient; his body has not been found.
In 1943, at the height of the Second World War, Napoleon Abueva became an unwilling victim of the atrocities of the Japanese. With his father, a leader in the underground movement, and his mother in the women's Auxiliary group, the family was hunted. His parents were captured, tortured, and killed in Valencia. Billy was then only 14 years old, but this did not spare him from the brutality of the invaders. He accompanied his grandmother to Ilaya, Duero where they were captured by some Japanese soldiers. His grandmother was later freed, but he was hog-tied, brought to Guindulman, and tortured for more than a week. He lost his front teeth, and the blue-black marks on his wrists and ankles took weeks to heal. [1]
As a young boy, Billy studied at the Tagbilaran Elementary School, and later at University of Southern Philippines, Holy Name College (now Holy Name University), and Rafael Palma College (now the University of Bohol) before making it as a sculptor.
A home-grown talent, he was given a break in 1951 when he won the Pura Villanueva-Kalaw Scholarship. He then took up a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines where he graduated in 1953. This was followed by a Fulbright-Smith Mundt Scholarship in 1954-55, after which he got a foreign Students Scholarship at the University of Kansas (1955-56). At the same time, he won another scholarship at the Instituto de Allende in Mexico City which he did not avail due to conflict in schedule. It was also in 1955 that he finished his Masters in Fine Arts at the Cranbook Academy of Arts, U.S. In 1956, he attended Harvard University for another scholarship grant.
At U.P, one of his mentors was Guillermo Tolentino, also a national artist, who created the oblation at the university entrance .
Abueva has helped shape the local sculpture scene in the Philippines. Being adept in both academic representational style and modern abstract, he has utilized almost all kinds of materials from hard wood (molave, acacia, langka wood, ipil, kamagong, palm wood and bamboo) to adobe, metal, stainless steel, cement, marble, bronze, iron, alabaster, coral and brass.
In 1976, he was proclaimed as National Artist of the Philippines for Visual Arts by then President Ferdinand Marcos. He was the youngest recipient of the title at age 46.
Some of his major works include Kaganapan (1953), Kiss of Judas (1955), Thirty Pieces of Silver , The Transfiguration, Eternal Gardens Memorial Park (1979), UP Gateway (1967), Nine Muses (1994), UP Faculty Center, Sunburst (1994)-Peninsula Manila Hotel, the bronze figure of Teodoro M. Kalaw in front of National Library, and murals in marble at the National Heroes Shrine, Mt. Samat, Bataan. One masterpiece he dedicates to the Boholanos is the Sandugo or Blood Compact shrine in Bohol, Tagbilaran City, a landmark at the site of the first international treaty of friendship between Spaniards and Filipinos. This is now a tourist attraction in Bohol province. This shrine is an expression of Abueva's awareness of his roots, and a manifestation of his artistic talents.
Abueva also performed the death mask procedure of opposition leader Ninoy Aquino in 1983, as well as that of Fernando Poe, Jr. in 2004. Both masks are now displayed at the Center for Kapampangan Studies, Hacienda Luisita, Tarlac. Incidentally, he also made a death mask of Cardinal Sin
He is married to Cherry Abueva, a psychiatrist, and has three children, Amihan,Mulawin, and Duero. At present, he currently teaches at the Industrial Design department of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Design and Arts

The massacre of the innocents is a figurative painting and the style of the painting is a baroque, the subject tell about emotion because its see the grief, violence and also the desperate love or a cruelty. also, the painting is a horizontal image and the painter use a oil painting to paint. the surface material was use in this painting is a canvas board.the composition in this painting is the ideas and feelings of the painter,the elements is lead into picture and the pattern of movement of the painting is a linear pattern and