Fernando Amorsolo y Cueto (May 30, 1892 – April 24, 1972)

He was born on May 30, 1892 in Metro Manila, his parents were Pedro Amorsolo and
Bonifacia Cueto. His father Pedro found work in Daet, Camarines Norte right after Fernando was
born, while he was studying at a public school in Daet at home his parents taught him to read
and write in spanish. when Fernando was 11 years old his father passed away, the family
moved back to Manila and stayed with one of his uncle in his mother's side named Don Fabian
Dela Rosa who's also a filipino painter. he became an apprentice of Dela Rosa, who later on was
the advocate and guide to Amorsolo's painting career.

his first success as a young painter came in 1908 when he took 2nd place in a competion
organized by Asociacion Internacional de Artistas held at Bazar Escolta, between 1909 - 1914 he
was enrolled at Art School of the Liceo de Manila. His 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. After graduating from the Liceo, he
entered the University of Santo Tomas' School of Fine Arts, where De la Cruz taught at that time.
During college, Fernando Amorsolo's primary influences were the Portuguese people court
painter Diego Velázquez, John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste
Renoir, but mostly his contemporary Spanish masters Joaquín Sorolla Bastida and Ignacio
Zuloaga. To make money during school, Amorsolo joined competitions and did illustrations for
various Philippine publications, including Severino Reyes’ first novel in Tagalog language, Parusa
ng Diyos ("Punishment of God"), Iñigo Ed. Regalado's Madaling Araw ("Dawn"), as well as
illustrations for editions of the Pasyon. Amorsolo graduated with medals from the University of
the Philippines in 1914. 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. He taught at the
University for 38 years, including 14 years as director of the Art Department.

He was a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes, Nicknamed the "Grand
Old Man of Philippine Art". He was the first ever to be recognized as a National Artist of the
Philippines because of his pioneering use of impressionistic technique as well as his skill in the
use of lighting and backlighting in his paintings, significant not only in the development of
Philippine art but also in the formation of Filipino notions of self and identity.

Bathers by the Stream

 A fine example of how Amorsolo has popularized the image of the Filipina maiden, he
combines his mastery of the nude and figure drawing with a clear visual recreation of an idyllic
pre-colonial scene. A latent sensuousness is a dimension that Amorsolo pursued in his paintings
of young maidens all his life. The rustic scene in the master’s characteristic style embodies the
young, slender and shapely type of feminine beauty he favored, and evokes the serenity and
casual grace that Amorsolo paintings are famous for. Like most of the compositions by the
master, the figures are not tightly integrated. They are also not sharply delineated against the
background: they blend with the lush landscape and become an integral part of it, even if
Amorsolo employs his famous backlighting on the seated maiden’s body. The figures themselves
are almost academically classical, yet extremely casual in their poses and the fall of the drapery
against their bodies. The backdrop vegetation and landscape is calm and without sharp
contrasts, which gives the painting its particular visually rhythmic character.

bathing by the Stream (1951)

Bathing by the Stream displays Amorsolo's mastery of depicting the female form, rejecting
Western ideals of beauty in favour of portrayals of the Filipino women with their full, round
faces, bright and lively eyes, strong, blunt noses, and warm, tanned skin. Painting from live
models that posed in his studio, and later filling in the background of the scenes with
resplendent views of the natural Philippine landscape, Amorsolo sought to express the symbolic
fertility of the country's rich landscape.

Fernando Amorsolo was a portrait and landscape painter in the rural Philippines, he was
known for his illuminated landscapes and portraits that integrates the chiaroscuro style. This is a
Renaissance style that he injected into the traditional Filipno culture and history. Chiaroscuro is
his artistic trademark that involves the interplay of light and dark, and this became his greatest
contribution to Philippine painting. His paintings usually feature scenes in glowing rural
landscapes, such as farmers in rice fields and women sorting through mangoes which is really
depicting the everyday life of a filipino that he depicted through paintings. Amorsolo was an
important influence on contemporary Filipino art and artists, even beyond the so-called
Amorsolo school. Amorsolo's influence can be seen in many landscape paintings by Filipino
artists, including early landscape paintings by abstract painter Federico Aguilar Alcuaz.
Throughout his life, Amorsolo’s sketches and studies are estimated to number over 10,000
pieces. In 1972, five days after his death, he was posthumously honored with the Philippines’
first National Artist Award for Painting. He left behind a trail of legacies around the world in the
form of priceless paintings that depicted virtue and showed his sense of optimism.

José Tanig Joya (June 3, 1931 – May 11, 1995)

 He was born on June 3, 1931, the son of Jose Joya Sr. and Asuncion Tanig. He began
sketching at the age of eleven. At a young age, he became interested in studying architecture,
but found that he did not have the aptitude for the math and science that architecture would
require. While attending the University of the Philippines he was introduced to the paintings of
Fernando Amorsolo, and began his study of painting.

He was initially schooled in the traditional tradition, in which the standards had been set
by Amorsolo and Tolentino. Gradually was influenced by American abstraction and by the
emerging trends in Philippine modernism. He was mentored by Guillermo Tolentino, Ireneo
Miranda, Domindaor Castaneda and Virginia Agbayani. oya graduated from the University of the
Philippines (UP) in 1953 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art, earning the distinction of being
the university’s first Magna cum Laude. In 1954 the Instituto de Cultura Hispanica of the Spanish
government awarded him a one year grant to study painting in Madrid. The travel or study
scholarship to Madrid was influenced by PAG member Fernando Zobel de Ayala, PAG members
was alos included namely Arturo Luz, Nena Saguil and Larry Tronco. After returning from Spain,
Joya finished his Master’s Degree in Painting in 1956 at the Cranbrook School of Art in Michigan,
with the assistance of a Fulbright Smith-Mundt grant. Joya was often present a the Saturday
Group which met for weekly art discussions at the Taxa de Oro Restaurant in Manila. In 1962,
when Joya was serving as the President of the Art Association of the Philippines, he and
Napolean Abueva represented the Philippines in the prestigious Venice Biennale: it was the first
time that the Philippines had participated. He displayed a 1958 horizontal abstraction titled
Granadian Arabesque, a painting which features powerful swipes of impasto mixed with sand,
and which is now in the collection of the Ateneo Art Gallery. Joya later wrote about participating
in the Biennale, and reported on the novelty, desire to shock and dazzle of the work on view.

National artist Jose Joya was a pioneer modern and abstract artist who was active as a
painter, printmaker, mixed-media artist and ceramicist. It has been said that it was Joya who
spearheaded the birth, growth and flowering of abstract expressionism in the Philippines. His
mature abstract works have been said to be characterized by calligraphic gestures and linear
forces, and a sense of color vibrancy emanating from an Oriental sensibility. Joya’s sense of
color has been said to have come from the hues of the Philippine landscape, and his use of rice
paper in collages demonstrated an interest in transparency.

Granadean Arabesque’ by Jose Joya (1958)

 The “Granadean Arabesque,” a masterpiece by National Artist Jose Joya, is a horizontal
abstract painting which showcases different shades of yellow, and features broad strokes and
swipes of impasto mixed with sand. It is a masterful execution of texture and composition, an
embodiment of Joya’s talent as a mixed-media artist and pioneer of modern art in the
Philippines. This 1958 oil on canvas with a size of 305 cm by 118 cm, was among the works of
Joya showcased to represent the Philippines in the prestigious Venice Biennale in 1964. This was
the first time that the Philippines participated in the world’s longest-running biennale and the
leading showplace for contemporary art and the international avant-garde. The painting is now
in the collection of Ateneo Art Gallery, a gift of Fernando Zóbel. An abstract artist who was
active as a painter, printmaker, mixed-media artist and ceramicist, Joya has contributed a lot to
the country’s field of arts. Many of Joya’s paintings of harmonious colors were inspired by
Philippine landscapes, such as green rice paddies and golden fields of harvest. His use of rice
paper in collages placed value on transparency, a common characteristic of folk art.

Ang Kiukok (March 1, 1931 – May 9, 2005)

 Ang was born on March 1, 1931, in Davao, Davao Province, Philippines to Vicente Ang
and Chin Lim and they were immigrants from Xiamen China, He was originally intended to be
named Ang Hua Shing (Hua Shing literally means Chinese-born) but did not push through with
the plan upon learning that his cousin was given the name by his uncle. He has four sisters and
he was the only son of the family.

Ang was taught by a commercial artist at a young age on how to make charcoal portrait.
Ang attended a Chinese high school where he learned Chinese calligraphy, He moved to Manila
and attended the University of Santo Tomas He studied in the university from 1952 to 1954
where one of his mentors was Vicente Manansala. Sadly he He was forced to stop his studies
due to financial constraints.

Ang's first formal recognition in his career as an artist was when his work Calesa
garnered third place at the Shell National Students Art Competition in 1953. In 1954, he
launched his first one-man show at the Contemporary Arts Gallery after he was urged by his
mentor Manansala. Within a few years his works which garnered him more recognition such as
Still Life (1951, Honorable mention), The Bird (1959, First Prize), Still Life in Red (1963, Third
Prize), Fish (1963, Second Prize) and Geometric Still-Life Fish (1963, Second Prize). All of these
recognition was from the Art Association of the Philippines. He first attained prominence in the
Philippine arts scene in the 1960s with a distinct style that fused influences from cubism,
surrealism and expressionism. Some classified his style as figurative expressionism. What could
not be doubted was the violence in his imagery, a factor that slighted the commercial viability of
his works until the 1980s. He favored such subjects as fighting cocks, rabid dogs, and people
enraptured by rage or bound in chains. As someone who has a Catholic background, he painted
multiple depictions of the crucified Christ that did not shirk from portraying the agonies
normally associated with the crucifixion. It did not escape attention that many of Ang's most
violent or gruesome imagery was painted during the martial law rule of Ferdinand Marcos,
though he did not build a reputation for himself as a prominent critic of the Marcos regime.

Ang was conferred the honor of being a National Artist for Visual Arts in 2001, by virtue
of Presidential Proclamation No. 32, s. 2001, which was signed on April 20, 2001.The ceremonial
conferment of the honor to Ang and three other artists - F. Sionil Jose (literature), Ishmael
Bernal (film) and Severino Montano (theater arts) - was held on June 11, 2001.

Pieta
 Ang Kiukok’s stylistic leanings have often, if not always, featured a cubistic quality. There
is a uniqueness in his approach to his aesthetic where the once rigid, and later on more
expressive take on forms have given viewers a very evocative brand of art. It is in Kiukok’s ability
to visually embody angst, anguish, and pain with his subjects that makes for his creations’
inimitable emotional quality. Just as in this oil on paper work, the pained Christ exemplifies the
very torment that is ever present even Mary, the dark shroud clutching the beaten Christ, is
depicted very subtly yet powerfully. The painting is all about the sacrifice of our God Jesus Christ
Thispainting shows how hard Jesus went through just to save us he didnot retaliate or fight with
violence he sacrificed his life becausemany people were sinners and did not believe in the lord,
Kiukokmade the artwork to show people his absolute faith and trust inGod, as you can see in
the painting Kiukok feel the pain and hatredwhat the god has experience

Vincent Willem van Gogh(March 30, 1853 – July 29, 1890)

 He was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, a town in Brabant, Holland and his
parents were Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Cornelia Carbentus, His father was a minister in
the Dutch Reformed Church. He was the eldest of six children, he had a brother named Theo
and three sisters and was named after his grandfather and a stillborn brother who died a year
before his birth.

Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he
worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed after he was transferred to
London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in predominantly
Roman Catholic southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting
in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him
financially; the two kept a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and
depictions of peasant labourers, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later
work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile
Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work
developed he created a new approach to still lifes and local landscapes. His paintings grew
brighter as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the South
of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive
trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about
his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank
heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he
severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at
Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise
near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression
persisted, and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a
revolver, dying from his injuries two days later. Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during
his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and a failure. As he became famous only after his
suicide, he came to be seen as a misunderstood genius in the public imagination.[6] His
reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be incorporated by
the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical and commercial success
over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter whose
troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works
are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured
by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's
largest collection of his paintings and drawings.

Cafe Terrace at Night

 This painting of a colorful outdoor view is a picturesque work, the vision of a relaxed
spectator who enjoys the charm of his surrounding without any moral concern. It recalls Van
Gogh's mood when he wrote that "the night is more alive and more richly colored than the
day." The color is more profuse and the eye wanders along the steeped or dove-tailed edges of
neighboring areas - irregular shapes fitted to each other like a jigsaw puzzle design. To divide
this space for long into a large object and background themes is difficult for the eyes; the distant
and nearer parts are alike distinct. The yellow of the cafe plays against the blue-black of the
remote street and the violet-blue of the foreground door, and, by a paradox of composition that
helps to unify the work, at the strongest point of contrast the awning's blunt corner nearest to
us touches the remote blue sky. Foreshortened lines that thrust into depth, like the lintel of the
door, are strictly parallel to lines like the slope of the yellow awning and the roof of the house
above, which lie in planes perpendicular to the first. For this roving, unengaged vision the
upward dimension is no less important and expressive than the depth.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973)

 Pablo Picasso was on born October 25, 1881, Málaga, Spain and was the son of José
Ruiz Blasco, a professor of drawing, and Maria Picasso López. His unusual adeptness for drawing
began to manifest itself early, around the age of 10, when he became his father’s pupil in A
Coruña, where the family moved in 1891. From that point his ability to experiment with what he
learned and to develop new expressive means quickly allowed him to surpass his father’s
abilities. In A Coruña his father shifted his own ambitions to those of his son, providing him with
models and support for his first exhibition there at age 13.

The family moved to Barcelona in the autumn of 1895, and Pablo entered the local art
academy (La Llotja), where his father had assumed his last post as professor of drawing. The
family hoped that their son would achieve success as an academic painter, and in 1897 his
eventual fame in Spain seemed assured; in that year his painting Science and Charity, for which
his father modeled for the doctor, was awarded an honourable mention in Madrid at the Fine
Arts Exhibition. The Spanish capital was the obvious next stop for the young artist intent on
gaining recognition and fulfilling family expectations. Pablo Ruiz duly set off for Madrid in the
autumn of 1897 and entered the Royal Academy of San Fernando. But finding the teaching
there stupid, he increasingly spent his time recording life around him, in the cafés, on the
streets, in the brothels, and in the Prado, where he discovered Spanish painting. He wrote: The
Museum of paintings is beautiful. Velázquez first class; from El Greco some magnificent heads,
Murillo does not convince me in every one of his pictures. Works by those and other artists
would capture Picasso’s imagination at different times during his long career. Goya, for instance,
was an artist whose works Picasso copied in the Prado in 1898 (a portrait of the bullfighter Pepe
Illo and the drawing for one of the Caprichos, Bien tirada está, which shows a Celestina
[procuress] checking a young maja’s stockings). Those same characters reappear in his late
work. Pepe Illo in a series of engravings (1957) and Celestina as a kind of voyeuristic self-
portrait, especially in the series of etchings and engravings known as Suite 347 (1968). Picasso
fell ill in the spring of 1898 and spent most of the remaining year convalescing in the Catalan
village of Horta de Ebro in the company of his Barcelona friend Manuel Pallarès. When Picasso
returned to Barcelona in early 1899, he was a changed man: he had put on weight; he had
learned to live on his own in the open countryside; he spoke Catalan; and, most important, he
had made the decision to break with his art-school training and to reject his family’s plans for
his future. He even began to show a decided preference for his mother’s surname, and more
often than not he signed his works P.R. Picasso; by late 1901 he had dropped the Ruiz
altogether. In Barcelona Picasso moved among a circle of Catalan artists and writers whose eyes
were turned toward Paris. One of Picasso’s principal artistic discoveries on that trip (October–
December) was colour not the drab colours of the Spanish palette, the black of the shawls of
Spanish women, or the ochres and browns of the Spanish landscape but brilliant colour the
colour of Vincent van Gogh, of new fashion, of a city celebrating a world’s fair. Using charcoal,
pastels, watercolours, and oils, Picasso recorded life in the French capital (Lovers in the Street
1900). In Moulin de la Galette (1900) he paid tribute to French artists such as Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec and the Swiss Théophile Alexandre Steinlen as well as his Catalan compatriot
Ramon Casas.

There are many periods of Picasso's Painting namely blue period, rose period, cubism,
collage, new mediterraneanism, surrealism and dabbled in sculpture. Because Picasso’s art from
the time of the Demoiselles was radical in nature, virtually no 20th-century artist could escape
his influence. Moreover, whereas other masters such as Henri Matisse or Braque tended to keep
within certain stylistic boundaries, Picasso continued to be an innovator into the last decade of
his life. That led to misunderstanding and criticism both in his lifetime and since, and it was only
in the 1980s that his last paintings began to be appreciated both in themselves and for their
profound influence on the rising generation of young painters. Since Picasso was able from the
1920s to sell works at very high prices, he could keep most of his oeuvre in his own collection.
At the time of his death he owned some 50,000 works in various media from every period of his
career, a selection of which passed into possession of the French state and the rest to his heirs.
Their exhibition and publication served to reinforce the highest estimates of Picasso’s
astonishing powers of invention and execution over a span of more than 80 years.

Science and Charity

Picasso painted Science and Charity at age 16. The painting is considerably larger (almost
two by two and a half meters) and equally stilted. With whatever its shortcomings it was
thought sufficiently impressive to deserve an honorable mention when shown at the Exposicion
General de Bellas Artes in Madrid in the spring of 1897, and a gold medal in provincial Malaga
shortly afterwards. Equipped with a portentous allegorical title invented by Picasso's father Don
Jose, who suggested the subject and posed for the doctor, it went one better than First
Communion in supplementing a pious motif with the irresistible pathos of a full-dress deathbed
scene. Deathbed scenes - especially scenes of expiring mothers - were popular all over Europe
in the late nineteenth century and several pictures by contemporary Spanish artists have been
suggested as sources for Science and Charity. But it is also likely that Picasso - or Don Jose - had
seen a reproduction of Luke Fildes's The Doctor, a theatrically conceived, moralistic composition
which enjoyed phenomenal celebrity when it was shown at the Royal Academy in London in
1891.