Lesson 3:

National
Artists (Dance,
Theater, and
Visual Arts)
Learning
Objectives

At the end of this session, you

will be able to:

1. explain Filipino artists’

roles in dance, theater, and
visual arts
2. identify their contribution
to contemporary arts, and
3. interpret and relate the
significance of arts forms
from the regions
THE ORDER OF
NATIONAL
ARTISTS FOR
DANCE
Francisca Reyes Aquino
(March 9, 1899 – November 21, 1983)
National Artist for Dance (1973)
Francisca Reyes Aquino is known as the Folk-Dance Pioneer. She
started her research on folk dances in the 1920s as she travelled to
remote barrios in Northern a Central Luzon. Her thesis titled “Philippine
Folk Dances and Games” was the product of her research on the
unrecorded forms of local ritual, sport, celebration. It was arranged
specifically for use by teachers and playground instructors in public
and private schools.
Ramon Obusan
(June 16, 1938 – December 21, 2006)
National Artist for Dance (2006)
Ramon Obusan achieved success in Philippine cultural work dance.
He was a dancer, stage designer, choreographer, and artistic
director. Obusan had affected cultural exchanges by utilizing the
various aspects and dimensions of the art of dance through the
Ramon Obusan Folkloric Grop (ROFG). He was also known as a
documentary filmmaker, researcher, and archivist who broadened
the Filipino understanding of his own cultural life and expressions.
Alice Reyes
National Artist for Dance (2014)
Alice Reyes was a known dancer, choreographer, teacher, and
director. She has become a significant part of Philippine dance
parlance because she has made a lasting impact on the
promotion and development of contemporary dance in the
country. Her dance training started with classical ballet under the
supervision of Rosalia Merino Santos. In the United States, she began
training in folk dance under the Bayanihan Philippine National
Dance Company. She also pursued modern dance and jazz
education.
Leonor Orosa Goquingco
(July 24, 1917 – July 15, 2005)
National Artist for Dance
Leonor Orosa Goquingco, is known as the pioneer Filipino
choreographer in balletic folkloric. She is also dubbed as the
“Trailblazer”, “Mother of Philippine Theater Dance” and “Dean of Filipino
Performing Arts Critics”. Seen as her most ambitious work is the
dance epic “Filipinescas: Philippine Life, Legend and Lore.” With it,
Orosa brought native folk dance, mirroring Philippine culture from
pagan to modern times, to its highest stage of development.
Lucrecia Reyes-Urtula 
(June 29, 1929 – August 4, 1999)
National Artist for Dance (1988)
Lucrecia Reyes-Urtula spent almost four decades in the study of
ethnic dances and Philippine folk dances. She is a choreographer,
dance educator and researcher. She applied her findings to present
a new example of an ethnic dance culture that goes beyond simple
preservation and into creative growth.
THE ORDER OF
NATIONAL
ARTISTS FOR
THEATER
Daisy H. Avellana
(January 26, 1917 – May 12, 2013)
National Artist for Theater (1999)
Daisy H. Avellana, is an actor, director and writer. She brought
theater and dramatic arts to a new level of excellence by staging
and performing in breakthrough productions of classic Filipino and
foreign plays and by encouraging the establishment of
performing groups and the professionalization of Filipino theater.
Avellana and her husband, National Artist Lamberto Avellana, co-
founded the Barangay Theatre Guild in 1939 which paved the way
for the popularization of theatre and dramatic arts in the country by
using radio and television.
Rolando S. Tinio
(March 5, 1937 – July 7, 1997)
National Artist for Theater & Literature (1997)
Rolando S. Tinio is a teacher, poet, playwright, thespian, critic, and
translator. He was a known stage director whose original insights into
the scripts he handled brought forth notable productions for their visual
impact and intellectual cogency. He took on Teatro Pilipino after
staging productions for the Ateneo Experimental Theater.

It was to Teatro Pilipino which he left a considerable amount of work

reviving traditional Filipino drama by re-staging old theater forms like
the sarswela and opening a treasure-house of contemporary Western
drama. Theater claimed a place among the arts in the Philippines
during the 1960s because of the excellence and beauty of his practice.
Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero
(January 22, 1910 –April 28, 1995)
National Artist for Theater (1997)
Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero is a teacher and theater artist whose 35 years of
devoted professorship has produced the most sterling luminaries in
Philippine performing arts today: Behn Cervantes, Celia Diaz-Laurel, Joy
Virata, Joonee Gamboa, etc. In 1947, he was appointed as UP Dramatic
Club director and served for 16 years. He pioneered the concept of
theater campus tour and delivered no less than 2,500 performances
in a span of 19 committed years of service while he was the artistic
director of the UP Mobile Theater.
Honorata “Atang” Dela Rama
(January 11, 1902 –July 11, 1991)
National Artist for Theater & Music (1987)
Honorata “Atang” Dela Rama was formally honored as the Queen of
Kundiman in 1979, then already 74 years old singing the same song
(“Nabasag na Banga”) that she sang as a 15-year old girl in the sarsuela
Dalagang Bukid. Atang became the very first actress in the very first locally
produced Filipino film when she essayed the
same role in the sarsuela’s film version.

Atang firmly believes that the sarswela and the kundiman expresses best the
Filipino soul, and even performed kundiman and other Filipino songs for the
Aetas or Negritos of Zambales and the Sierra Madre, the Bagobos of Davao
and other Lumad of Mindanao.
Lamberto V. Avellana
(February 12, 1915 –April 25, 1991)
National Artist for Theater & Film (1976)
Lamberto V. Avellana was the first to utilize the motion picture camera to
establish a point-of-view, a move that revolutionized the techniques of
film narration. He was a director for theater and film. He was also known
as “The Boy Wonder of Philippine Movies” as early as 1939. Avellana, who
at 20 portrayed Joan of Arc in time for Ateneo’s diamond jubilee, initially
set out to establish a Filipino
theater.
THE ORDER OF
NATIONAL
ARTISTS FOR
VISUAL ARTS
Fernando Amorsolo
(May 30, 1892 – April 24, 1972)
National Artist for Visual Arts 
Fernando C. Amorsolo is the country’s first National Artist. On January 23,
1969, the official title “Grand Old Man of Philippine Art” was bestowed on
Amorsolo. Returning from his studies abroad in the 1920s, Amorsolo
developed the backlighting technique that became his trademark were
figures, a cluster of leaves, the swell of breast, are seen aglow on canvas.
This light, Nick Joaquin opines, is the rapture of a sensualist utterly in love
with the earth, with the Philippine sun, and is an accurate expression of
Amorsolo’s own exuberance. His citation underscores all his years of
creative activity which have “defined and perpetuated a distinct element
of the nation’s artistic and cultural heritage”.
Hernando R. Ocampo
(April 28, 1911 – December 28, 1978)
National Artist for Visual Arts (1991)
Hernando R. Ocampo’s works contributed to the rise of the nationalist
spirit in the post-war era and provided an understanding and
awareness of the harsh social realities in the country immediately after
the Second World War.  A self-taught painter, Ocampo became a
leading member of the pre-war Thirteen Moderns, the group that
charted the course of modern art in the Philippines. He also played an
important role in sustaining the the country’s first Art Gallery. His abstract
works left an indelible mark on Philippine modern art. His canvases
evoked the lush Philippine landscape, its flora and fauna, under the sun
and rain in fierce and bold colors.
Benedicto ‘Bencab’ Cabrera
National Artist for Visual Arts (2006)
Benedicto R. Cabrera started his career in the mid-sixties as a lyrical
expressionist. Bencab upheld the primacy of drawing over the decorative
color. His solitary figures of scavengers emerging from a dark landscape
were piercing stabs at the social conscience of a people long inured to
poverty and dereliction. Bencab, who was born in Malabon, has
christened the emblematic scavenger figure “Sabel.” For Bencab, Sabel is
a melancholic symbol of dislocation, despair, and isolation–the
personification of human dignity threatened by life’s vicissitudes, and the
vast inequities of Philippine society.
Carlos “Botong” Francisco
(November 4, 1912 –March 31, 1969)
National Artist for Painting (1973)
Carlos “Botong” Francisco, also known as the poet of Angono, revived the
forgotten art of mural and remained its most distinguished practitioner
for nearly three decades. He was invariably linked with the “modernist”
artists, forming with Victorio C. Edades and Galo Ocampo what was then
known in the local art circles as “The Triumvirate”. In panels such as those
that grace the City Hall of Manila, Francisco turned fragments of the
historic past into vivid records of the legendary courage of
the ancestors of his race
Guillermo Tolentino
(July 24, 1890 – July 12, 1976)
National Artist for Sculpture (1973)
Guillermo Estrella Tolentino is a product of the Revival period in Philippine
art. He was enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Returning
from Europe in 1925, the idea of executing a monument for national
heroes struck him while he was a professor at the UP School of Fine Arts.
The result was the UP Oblation that became the symbol of freedom at
the campus. Acknowledged as his masterpiece and completed in 1933,
The Bonifacio Monument in Caloocan stands as an enduring
symbol of the Filipinos’ cry for freedom.
Arturo Luz
National Artist for Visual Arts (1997)
Arturo Luz was a sculptor, painter, and designer for more than 40 years.
He created masterpieces that symbolize an ideal of sublime austerity in
form and expression. Luz produced works that elevated Filipino aesthetic
vision to new heights of sophisticated simplicity like the Carnival series of
the late 1950s and the recent Cyclist paintings. Luz inspired and
developed a Filipino artistic community that nurtures impeccable
designs by establishing the Luz Gallery. It professionalized the art gallery
as an institution and set a prestigious influence over
generations of Filipino artists.
Napoleon Abueva
(January 26, 1930 – February 16, 2018)
National Artist for Sculpture(1976)
Napoleon Abueva is considered as the Father of Modern Philippine
Sculpture. Abueva helped shape the local sculpture scene to what it is
now. At 46 then, Napoleon V. Abueva, a native of Bohol, was the youngest
National Artist awardee. Being adept in either academic representational
style or modern abstract, he has utilized almost all kinds of materials
from hardwood (molave, acacia, langka wood, ipil, kamagong, palm
wood and bamboo) to adobe, metal, stainless steel, cement, marble,
bronze, iron, alabaster, coral and brass. Among the early innovations,
Abueva introduced in 1951 was what he referred to as “buoyant
sculpture”- sculpture meant to be appreciated from the surface of a
placid pool.
Victorio Edades
(December 23, 1895 – March 7, 1985)
National Artist for Painting (1976)
Victorio C. Edades emerged as the “Father of Modern Philippine Painting”.
Painting distorted human figures in rough, bold impasto strokes, and
standing tall and singular in his advocacy and practice of what he
believes is the creative art. Unlike, Amorsolo’s bright, sunny, cheerful hues,
Edades’ colors were dark and somber with subject matter or themes
depicting laborers, factory workers or the simple folk in all their dirt, sweat
and grime. It was during this time that he introduced a liberal arts
program that offers subjects as art history and foreign languages that
will lead to a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts.
Jose Joya
National Artist for Visual Arts (2003)
Jose Joya is a painter and multimedia artist who distinguished himself
by creating an authentic Filipino abstract idiom that transcended foreign
influences. His use of rice paper in collages placed value on
transparency, a common characteristic of folk art. Most of Joya’s
paintings of harmonious colors were inspired by Philippine landscapes.
The curvilinear forms of his paintings often recall the colorful and
multilayered ‘kiping’ of the Pahiyas festival. His important mandala series
was also drawn from Asian aesthetic forms and concepts. He espoused
the value of kinetic energy and spontaneity in painting which became
significant artistic values in Philippine art.
Summary

This lesson focuses on the background of the different

Filipino National Artists for Dance, Theater, and Visual Arts.
Some of their notable works were also discussed and
presented. The aim of this lesson is to make students
recognize and relate to the outstanding contributions of
their fellowmen.
End of Presentation.

Thank you for watching!

See you to the next lesson!

w!
no
for
e
By