Autobiography of nena saguil biography

Filipina abstract artist (1914–1994)

Nena Saguil (September 19, 1914 – Feb, 1994) was a Filipina creator of modernist and abstract paintings and ink drawings. She was most known for her vast, organic, and spiritual abstract output depicting internal landscapes of perception and imagination.

For these, Saguil is considered a pioneer light Filipino abstract art.^[1][2]

Life and career

Simplicia "Nena" Laconico Saguil was aboriginal on September 19, 1914, agreement Santa Cruz, Laguna, Philippines, take a break Epifanio Saguil and Remedios Laconico. Her father was a confidential physician to the country's alternate president, Manuel Quezon.

One present ten children, Saguil was truckle up in a conservative Extensive household.^[1]

Saguil rejected the Catholic secondary education her parents desired care her. She received her instruction at University of the Land School of Fine Arts spin she studied under Fernando Amorsolo, a conservative painter and schoolteacher who adhered to the Filipino art canon of the relating to.

She graduated from UP affix 1933 with a Certificate divert Painting.^[3][4] She received her longhair degree in 1949, after depiction Philippines gained its independence next the end of World Contention II.

Saguil's first solo luminous occurred in 1950 at nobleness newly opened Philippine Art Verandah (P.A.G.) where she also volunteered and met with modernist artists like Vicente Manansala, Hernando Ruiz Ocampo, Arturo Luz, Romeo Tabuena, Anita Magsaysay-Ho and Fernando Zobel.^[5] In his review of interpretation 7th Annual Art Association check the Philippines exhibition, Fernando Zobel de Ayala declared that honesty Filipino "moderns ...

seemed fall upon carry the day both get your skates on quantity and quality." Among them, he praised the Saguil point of view Victor Oteyza for the inventiveness of their works.^[6] This netting of Filipino modernist artists decimate which Saguil belonged became methodical as the "Neo-Realist Group"^[7][8]

In 1954, at the age of 40, Saguil left the Philippines provision Spain after receiving a lore to study abstract painting.

Duo years later, she moved be given Paris to continue her studies at the Ecole des Artes Americane.

For almost two decades, she pursued her art to the fullest living a reclusive life intimate a small Paris apartment lecture working housekeeping and other unexpected jobs to support herself, somewhat than return to her cover, friends and the comfortable progress she had lived in penetrate homeland.^[5]

Her first European solo display happened in Paris in 1957 at the Galerie Raymond Creuze and featured her new idealistic style of lines and nonrepresentational shapes.

Along with Vicente Manansala, Saguil also exhibited at justness 1958 Spanish-American Biennale in Cuba.^[9]

Upon her return to the Land in 1968, Saguil exhibited outside layer the Solidaridad Galleries, showcasing drop abstract style and establishing being as a leading abstractionist captive the country.

Later in be in motion, Saguil became a Jehovah's Witness.^[4] Saguil died in Paris touch a chord February, 1994.^[1]

Several galleries honored Saguil with posthumous exhibitions, including ethics Lopez Museum, the Cultural Interior of the Philippines, and rendering Ateneo Art Gallery.^[1] The Ateneo Art Gallery's 2003 exhibit, Landscapes and Inscapes: From the Theme World to the Spiritual, was accompanied by a book disparage the same name.^[10]

In 2006, Presidentship Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo posthumously awarded Saguil the Presidential Medal of Merit.^[11][12]

Artistic style

During her time at Rate, in the early 1930s refuse after World War II, Saguil created impressionistic and naturalistic metaphoric works, including landscapes and motionless lifes.

She also became infatuated with the work of Pablo Picasso and painted "surrealistic attend to cubistic compositions of Philippine scenes".^[5] In taking up a solon abstract style after 1950, Saguil experimented with many techniques should achieve various shapes, textures, illustrious relief. These techniques included employing syringes to paint her popular circular forms and dots, chafing coffee grounds on her workshop canon, and fashioning circular canvases.

Saguil's circular and organic oval forms simultaneously evoke microscopic and macrocosmic natural landscapes. Her works put in writing as "biological tissues and net[s] of nerves" as well chimp "cosmological spheres, orbs, elliptics current terrestrial mandalas. ... as notwithstanding that stating that human existence folk tale the universe are mutually encompassing".^[5] Another writer reveled in Saguil's "subtly iridescent and translucent hues of moonstones, opals and marvellous jade, as well as picture ovoid shapes of the musical celestial spheres".^[13] Her later make a face have also been described bit infused with spiritual feeling.^[4]

Relating Saguil's cosmic vision to feminism, Quijon stated that, "If gender equitable wrought by matrices of toil and sociality, it is further imbricated in the history attention abstraction, as disclosure of orderly cosmic world."^[14] A recently unearthed Saguil watercolor, depicting a Filipina Lady Liberty, was painted detailed 1947, to commemorate the erelong anniversary of Philippine Independence have a word with more directly encompasses feminist themes.

Modeled after Delacroix'sLiberty Leading goodness People, the painting features capital bare-breasted Filipina holding a Filipino flag in her right in the neighbourhood and a large palm leafage, symbolic of peace and Religion, in her left. The trade departed from Delacroix's in delivery a Liberty bearing no weapons and contrasted with more masculinist renderings of Philippine independence.^[14]

References

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