The first paintings were commissionned works during the Spanish colonial era.

Since most art produced during

the first two centuries of Spanish occupation were for the church, the friars enforced strict supervision over their
production. Until the 19th century, art was only for the church and religious use.
There is also some Chinese influence which can be found in the brush handling.
Secular subject matter in painting only increased during the 19th century. With more tourists, ilustrados and
foreigners demanding souvenirs and decorations from the country, tipos del pais developed in painting. These
watercolor paintings show the different types of inhabitants in the Philippines in their different native costumes
that show their social status and occupation. It also became an album of different native costumes. Damian
Domingo y Gabor (ca. 1790-1832) was the most popular artist who worked in this style.
Several Filipino painters had the chance to study and work abroad. Among them were Juan Novicio Luna and
Felix Resureccion Hidalgo who became the first international Filipino artists when they won the gold and silver
medals in the 1884 Madrid Exposition.
During the American period (1900-45) on-demand portraitists included Fabian de la Rosa, Miguel Zaragoza,
Teodoro Buenaventura, Jorge Pineda and above all, Fernando Amorsolo, whose style would dominate the period.
Despite his exposure to Western influences, Fernando Amorsolo retained his Filipino consciousness. He was
drawn more towards the gentle rolling hills and rice fields of the Philippines rather than the cosmopolitan world
of Europe's proud cities. Even his illustrations of Spanish women were drawn with slender physiques, narrower
hips, and smaller breasts more typical of Filipinas rather than full bodied Caucasian women. One of his most
copied paintings is the "Palay Maiden".
Fernando Amorsolo's work still influences many contemporary painters. One of them is Monico Benjamin Botor.
Botor was born in Naga City, Camarines Sur He is a hobby painter who started taking it seriously as an avenue
of expressing his innate talent to explore in the aesthetic realm one's quest to capture the appeal of nature and
human response to its illusive beauty and profound mystery.
MODERRRNNN

Ernest Concepcion (1977-present)

Concepcion is a studio artist whose work experiments with intense emotion, deconstructing images in his
paintings, sculptures, and installations. He creates art like recording a music album, where each painting is from
a series of nine. Concepcion describes it as producing an old favorite, a classic, sleeper hit and one piece he
doesn’t really like but keeps coming back to.
He is a graduate of the University of the Philippines, with a Bachelor in Fine Arts while under the mentorship
of pioneer conceptual artist Roberto Chabet. After graduation, he moved to New York in 2002 and spent a
significant amount of time in Brooklyn, where he participated in art residences for the Bronx Museum of Art
Artists-in-the-Marketplace (AIM) Program, the Artists Alliance Inc. Rotating Studio Program, and the Lower
Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Workspace Program.
Concepcion returned to Manila in 2013 with a triumphant solo show at the U.P. Vargas Museum, after
participating in the El Museo del Barrio La Bienal in New York. He remains active on the Asian art scene and
is a recent recipient of the 13th Artists Award by the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Ronald Ventura (1973-present)

Ventura is a contemporary artist from Manila, with a Bachelor’s degree of Fine Arts in Painting from the
University of Santo Tomas. He initially taught in the same school after graduating but found his true calling as
a visual artist after his first solo exhibition at the Drawing Room in Makati in 2000. Ventura’s work is known to
consist of multiple layers, using imagery that focuses on the human form. His paintings are a dramatic union of
comic sketches, reality, and graffiti. He draws inspiration from Asian mythology, Catholicism, science fiction
and comic book characters. He is known to have the highest selling work in the history of the Southeast Asian
art market: his painting Grayground sold for a whopping $1.1 million USD at an auction in Sotheby’s Hong
Kong.
Neil Pasilan (1971-present)
Brother to artist Diokno Pasilan, Neil is a Bacolod-born artist from a family of craftsmen and boat builders. He
is a self-taught visual artist who displayed creativity as a child. Pasilan has moulded clay figures for most of his
life and continues to use this in his work.
Currently based in Manila, he has become known for his paintings that hold multiple layers, using different
mediums to expose new forms. Pasilan’s work has been represented by the Drawing Room of Manila,
Artinformal Gallery, and West Gallery. A notable collaboration with Raffy Napay was featured in Art Fair
Philippines in 2017.