Tribute to Pablo Victoria
Tribute to Pablo Victoria
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, December 17, 1986
in painting...
THE group exhibition "A Tribute to Pablo Victoria", extended with good reason at the CCP Main Gallery, is more homecoming than memorial, being a gathering of selected works by alumni from the University of the East, and having little more than incidental reference to the man dubbed "the father of modern art education in the Philippines." It is said that an exhibition of this nature had been in the making even before Victoria's untimely death, although the gestural offering is well-deserved and not a little overdue.
There are two main points to ponder here, the first being the outstanding harvest of local talent that the U.E. has produced to date. This is almost certainly an understatement. Without fanfare and the benefit of generous government subsidies, what is often thought to be a second-rate educational institution has given us a generation of creative innovators that could make our friends at the state university squirm. If indeed we have Victoria to thank for this, it is a pity that we now have only his memory to celebrate.
And then, too, there is the infinite wisdom of natural selection, being that by far the best works in the exhibit are by the more renowned participants - among them, Albor, Lao Lianben, Robles, Concepcion, Ramboyong, Mansueto, and Garcia. Nature's way, it seems, defies argument and curatorial preferences. The truly gifted will almost always rise to a place of prominence, given time and the courage needed to persist. Possible exceptions to this unspoken law include the xerographer Elizabeth Santiago, as well as the painter Rommel Bernardino, two artists whose unsung potential bears close watching.
"Tribute . . ." is a good show all around, rather unwittingly pointing the way to a potential resurgence in local abstraction through works by some of its most exciting and unrelenting champions today.
and poetry
By Hilario S. Francia
1) As the teacher
Celebrates his vision
In his teaching,
So does the painter
In his painting.
2) Art is the work of a man
Under the guidance of a higher
Power; and nature, the work
Of a power greater than man.
3) Art suggests
Infinitely more than
What it expresses.
4) Necessity gave birth
To the functional arts;
And leisure to the fine arts.
5) The fine arts produced
The gentle man
Out of a man.
6) The study of the finer
Things in life is not
Idleness, but food
For the human spirit.
* * *
Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Tribute to Pablo Victoria” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, December 17, 1986
