JAPANESE

OCCUPATION
PHILIPPINE ART
QUESTION: WHAT ART HAD DEVELOPED
DURING JAPANESE PERIOD IN THE
PHILIPPINES?

1. KALIBAPI – Kapisanan sa Paglilingkod ng

Bagong Pilipinas. This is an art competitions
in 1943 and 1944 where early moderns and
conservatives artists alike continued to
produce art and even participated in this
events.
2. GREATER EAST ASIA CO-PROSPERITY
SPHERE – a propaganda movement that
sought to create a Pan-Asian identity
that rejected Western traditions.
a. SHIN-SEIKI-a Japanese sponsored
publications of posters, ephemera,
comics, newspapers and magazines
such as Liwayway and Tribune and
slogans such as “Asia for Asians.”
- The production of images, texts, and
music underwent scrutiny.
- Expressions deemed subversive or
anti-Japanese led to torturous
consequences, even death.
b. HODOBU – Japanese Information
Bureau regulating the information
campaign, which employed local artists
and cultural workers like National artists
Felipe P. Ponce Deleon.
- Ponce Deleon was said to have been
“commanded at the point of the gun”
to write AWIT SA PAGLIKHA NG
BAGONG PILIPINAS. This song was
declared as the anthem specifically for
the period of Japanese occupation. It
conveyed allegiance to the nation
reared in East Asia, where Japan was
actively asserting its political power.
3. PAINTINGS THAT MOST FAVORED AND
ACCEPTED DURING JAPANESE OCCUPATION – this
painting continued to flourished because it
showed little or no indication of war atrocities.
a. Harvest Scene-produced in 1942 by Fernando
Amorsolo.
b. Rice Planting-produced also by Fernando
Amorsolo in 1942. These paintings evoked a
semblance of peace, idealized work in the
countryside, and promoted values of docile
industriousness.
c. Sa Kabukiran – a Tagalog hit song in
the 1940’s, written by the composer
Levi Celerio ( National Artist for Music
and Literature, 1997) and echoed by
Sylvia La Torre.
- This operatic song by La Torre sing a
long with an energetic tempo offered
an escape from the troubles of the war.
d. High Officials Portrait also produced during
this time.
-His excellency, Jorge V. Vargas, Chairman of
the Philippine Executive Commission, 1943.
-Independence this year, His excellency, Premier
Tojo, 1943.
Genre paintings were the most widely produced,
particularly those presented neutral relationship
between the Filipinos and the Japanese through
works that showed the normality of daily living.
• The colonizers also preferred works
that showed indigenous and pre-
colonial tradition.
Example for this are:
a. Study of an Aeta, 1943-by Crispin
Lopez. Although scenes from the war
were also made, the imagery remained
neutral, focusing rather on the
aesthetic qualities of ruin and disaster.
b. Bombing of the Intendencia and Ruins
of Manila Cathedral-1945. They draw
attention to the elegant handling of
value in the billows of smoke or the pile
of ruins rather than the urgency of the
disaster itself.
c. ATROCITIES IN PACO by Diosdado
Lorenzo’s and Dominador Castaneda’s
Doomed Family were painted after 1945.
THE RISE OF NEO-REALISM, ABSTRACTION AND
OTHER MODERN ART STYLES
• This period took place after the war in 1945
between Japanese and American soldiers.
• The art mainly focusing on the “true
conditions of the society after war.”
• E. Aguilar Cruz named the movement Neo-
realism. Manansala, Legaspi, and HR Ocampo
were among the National artists associated
with Neo-realism.
• These artists explored folk themes and also
crafted commentaries on the urban condition
and the effects of the war.
Examples:
1. THE BEGGARS-by Manansala, 1952.
-consists the two image of two womenwith
emaciated bodies, their forlorn faces set against
a dark background capturing the dreariness of
poverty.
2. TUBA DRINKERS - in 1954, characterized by
transparent cubism, a style marked by the soft
fragmentation of figures using transparent planes
instead of hard-edged ones, as exemplified in this
painting.

3. GADGETS II - Legaspi's painting in 1949, depicts

half-naked men almost engulfed in the presence of
the machines. Their elongated limbs and
exaggerated muscles indicate the hardship of their
labor, their expressionless faces and repetitive
actions rob them of their humanity as they function
like machines.
4. BAR GIRLS - in this painting, 1947, Legaspi's
shows that in this period are distorted by by his
his elongating or making rotund forms in a well
ordered composition.
5. THE CONTRASTS - 1940, is a distinct figurative
works whick exposes dire human conditions
amid the backdrop of modernity.
- Ocampo's painting in 1968 that combine
geometric and biomorphic shapes with vibrant
colors.
6. GENESIS-also Ocampo's painting in 1968,
which puts together warm colored shapes,
became the basis of the stunning tapestry
hanging at the Main Theater or Bulwagang
Nicanor Abelardo of the CCP .

Other artists identified with Neo-realism are

Ramon Estella, Victor Oteyza, and Romeo
Tabuena.
 PAINTING ART THAT WAS ALSO PRODUCED
DURING JAPANESE PERIOD
A. Job Was Also Man-by Martino Abellana.
B. Carroza- painting by Fernando Zobel.
C. Church of the Holy Sacrifice-in UP Diliman
Campus.
D. Church of the Risen Lord
E. Chapel of St. Joseph the Worker-built by the
Czech-American architect Antonin Raymond.
F. Angry Christ- by Alfonso Ossorio
 ABSTRACTION MODERN ART
• Another strand of Modern Art, generally
consists of simplified forms, which avoided
mimetic (exact copy) representation.
• It sometimes referred to as non-
representational or non-objective art as it
emphasized the relationships of line, color and
space or the flatness of the canvass rather
than an illusion of three-dimensionality.
 EXAMPLE OF ABSTRACTION ART
• STREET MUSICIANS, 1952 BY Arturo
Luz which pared down the figures
into lines and basic shapes.

• CARGADORES-1951, by Nena Saguil,

filled with circles and cell-like forms
 ARTISTS WHO ARE ABSTRACT
EXPRESSIONISTS
1. Constancio Bernardo
2. Lee Aguinaldo
3. National Artist Jose Joya
4. Fernando Zobel