Biography of Jose T. Joya, Philippine National Artist

JOSE TANIG JOYA (b. Manila, June 3, 1931 d. 1996)

Jose Joya

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. 

Jose Tanig Joya 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 -- but 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. 

Joya 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. Travel/study scholarships to Madrid -- which came about through the influence of PAG member Fernando Zobel de Ayala -- were also given to other PAG artists including 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. 

Above: The opening of a Jose Joya exhibit, featuring religious paintings, at the Philippine Art Gallery

Jose Joya (indicated in white) is 4th from the left. 

His early works were representational paintings that showed the influence of Vincente Manansala and Anita Magsaysay-Ho. During the late 1950's, as he became involved in the Philippine Art Gallery -- founded in 1950 by a group of women writers led by Lyn Arguilla -- he became one of the "new wave" of artists who developed abstract paintings. His first one make show appeared at the Philippine Art Gallery in 1954, and in March of 1958 he won first prize for his non-objective "Painting" in the 11th Annual PAG Art Exhibition, held at the Northern Motors Showroom. He won more prizes in 1959 (Second place for "Space Transfiguration), 1960 (Third place for "Horse of Life) and 1962 (Third place for "Cathedral). 

Jose Joya, "Untitled," 1960, approx. 16 x 24 inches, oil on canvas 

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. 

Side view of the impasto of Joya's "Granadian Arabesque"

In the late 60s received grants from the John D. Rockefeller III Fund and the Ford Foundation, which allowed him to paint and study at the Pratt Institute in New York between 1967 and 1969. Among the positions he held were:

- President of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP) 1962-65

- Dean of the UP College of Fine Arts 1970-78, where he modernized curriculum and established scholarships.

- Chairperson of Philippine Delegations to China, 1961 and 1972 

In the 1970s Joya executed two large murals, "Lanterns of Enlightenment" and "Mariveles" which display vivid interplays of shape and tone. When traveling overseas he often made rapid, on the spot sketches in pencil, charcoal or pastel. 

Joya was also a holder of the Amorsolo Professorial Chair in UP in 1985. He served as chairperson of the National Committee on Visual Arts, of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts from 1987 until his death. 

In 1981 a retrospective of some 200 of Joya's works was held at the Museum of Philippine Art. In1987 the French government awarded him membership in the "Order of Chevalier des Arts et Lettres." 

Jose Joya, "Makiling Interlude," 1984, Acrylic and Collage on Paper, approx. 22 x 15 inches

“In creating an art work,” Joya once stated “the artist is concretizing his need for communication. He has an irresistible urge to reach that level of spiritual satisfaction and to project what he is and what he thinks through his work.”

Joya died in May of 1995 at the age of 63 after complications from a prostate operation.

In 2003, eight years after his death, he was conferred the title of National Artist for his pioneering efforts in developing Filipino abstract art. A retrospective of his work was held in August of 2011 at the National Museum.

Roland Strasser: Artist and Adventurer

Painting by Roland Strasser 

ROLAND STRASSER (Austrian, April 24,1895 - July 27, 1974)

Roland Strasser, an Austrian painter of Basque descent, was born in Vienna in 1895. He was one of the great painter/adventurers of the early 20th century, and one of the last Orientalist romantics. His energetic paintings and drawings captured and portrayed the lives of subjects from regions and cultures still considered “exotic” by European viewers of the era. Once described by an admirer as “a strange, restless painter, who disappears for years…” Strasser was known for painting subjects that were difficult or even dangerous to paint.

Strasser first studied art with his father – whose family name was Quiriqez -- a member of the Viennese Sucession movement who taught at the Academy of Fine Arts and was known for his small scale polychrome ceramic sculptures and also for a bronze of Marc Antony that he created for the 1900 Paris World Exhibition. Strasser’s older brother Benjamin was also a painter and graphic artist. At the age of 17, after completing his studies at a Realschule, Roland Strasser accompanied his father on a trip to Egypt.

Strasser next studied with Rudolf Jettmar and Julius Schmidt at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts between 1911 and 1915. He was then assigned as war artist for the Imperial War Press. Roland then briefly worked as a lithographer and illustrator. In 1919 he traveled to Holland where painted at Volendam and earned enough money selling paintings to be able to travel the following year.

In 1920 Strasser traveled first to Siam (Thailand), then Java (Indonesia) and finally New Guinea. Along with another adventurer – whose intention was to shoot exotic birds – Strasser journeyed to the remote and forbidding interior of New Guinea. After being abandoned by his companion he spent four months in a Papuan village. He eventually made his way back to Java, but all of his drawings were lost. He then spent eighteen months at Bali where he met Willem Dooyewaard, a Dutch artist, who became his student and frequent travel companion.

In the autumn of 1922 Strasser traveled to Peking, and from there to the province of Shansi, where he made studies of peasants. He the continued on to Mongolia, and by 1924 was in the province of Szetshwan and finally the mountains of Tibet. As an artist, he used his rendering skills to render activities, postures and psychological states of his subjects. The works he made during this trip – both drawings and paintings – were shown in London by a Mr. W. B. Patterson, and the proceeds from their sale provided Strasser with funds for his next trip.

Strasser traveled through Bombay, Nagpur and Calcutta, then into the foothills of the Himilayas where he planned another trek into Tibet. At Kalimpong he assembled a caravan, and in January of 1925 he crossed the Kula Pass, and 10 months later reached Urga (now Ulaanbaatar) in Mongolia. After spending a year in Urga, Soviet authorities arrested Strasser as a spy. His diary and maps were confiscated, but he was allowed to keep his paintings and drawings.

In the winter of 1926 he travelled through the Gobi desert into China. He then took a train to Peking where all of the drawings he had made in Tibet and Mongolia were pillaged and destroyed by the troops of General Chang So-ling. Strasser travelled next to Tientsin, and then to Japan where he visited Kobe and Kyoto. Eight months later he took the Trans-Siberian railway to Vienna to visit his ailing father. After his father’s death in October, 1927 he remained in Europe and was the subject of an exhibition at the Berheim Jeune Gallery in Paris in February, 1928.

In 1930 he published "The Mongolian Horde," an account of five years of his travels in China and Mongolia, with 21 sketches included. In the foreward to his book, Strasser wrote:

“During five years of wandering in the heart of Asia, I accepted my experiences and impressions like such a child…But now that it is over, I feel the impulse to note down and retain, while they are still vivid, some at least of the strange and thrilling impressions that crowd upon me, in the shape of a few descriptive and open sketches.”

After additional travels, Strasser returned to Bali in 1934 where he stayed until 1944.

For years he had a studio in Kintamani above Lake Batur. He disliked visitors, and would leave his studio through a secret back door when not in the mood to entertain visitors. 

Roland Strasser died in Santa Monica California on July 27, 1974.

Hubert Vos: Painter of China's Dowager Empress Cixi

The Dutch born painter Hubert Vos, who attended the 1893 Chicago World's Fair as a Deputy Commissioner for the Netherlands, had an epiphany at the event which would change the course of his artistic career. He later wrote:

It was during the World’s Fair in Chicago, where the officials had brought together the greatest collection of the different people of the Globe ever reuninted in one spot at tremendous expense, that I began to study the works I could get hold of on Ethnology and was shocked to see what poor specimens the principal authors had, to illustrate their very superior works. I thought it might be possible to establish a type of beauty of the different aboriginal races before they became much too mixed or extinct and soon got to work. works. I thought it might be possible to establish a type of beauty of the different original aboriginal races before they became too much mixed or extinct and soon got to work.

 Although Vos continued to support himself with portrait commissions after the fair, he became increasingly known as a painter of ethnic types. In 1897 he spent eight months at Fort Totten, North Dakota, painting Native Americans. After that, travels to Hawaii, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong followed. In 1899, a few months before the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion, he was in China where he painted a variety of figures including a young man who would later become the first president of China. Vos asked to paint China's empress dowager, but his request was turned down and he returned to the U.S.

 Hubert Vos: Self-Portrait, 1922

About 40 of the ethnic portraits made by Vos during his travels in Asia were exhibited at the Union League Club in New York and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, as well as at the Paris International Exposition of 1900. Perhaps because of his background in painting society portraits, Vos' portraits of Asian subjects tended to endow them with a certain glamor and dignity. One critic described his portraits as "delicate, smooth, and accomplished.”

Through the efforts of Sarah Conger, the wife of the American envoy to Beijing, the American artist Katherine Carl was invited to Beijing in 1903 to produce a portrait of Empress Cixi for the upcoming 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Carl spent many months created a flattering life-size portrait that measured over nine feet tall. The finished work was shipped to St. Louis accompanied by a large retinue of Manchu officials where it had a prominent place in the exhibition.

Katherine Carl: Portrait of the Empress Cixi, 1903-4

In 1905 Vos, now an American citizen, returned to China and was given the opportunity to become the second American to paint the dowager empress. Cixi, who had been on the throne for 40 years when Vos arrived, was a notorious figure who had been much gossiped about in the west. It was whispered, for example, that she had poisoned her nephew and had his favorite concubine thrown down a well. Vos had to appear at court at 5 a.m. to meet her, and was given only four brief sessions in a studio on the top floor of a Beijing hotel. In his letters he later related his impressions of his subject:

Erect, with a tremendous will power, more than I have ever seen in a human being. Hard, firm will and thinking lines, and with a brow full of kindness and a love for the beautiful. I fell straight in love with her.

 Hubert Vos: The Dowager Empress Cixi (Tzu Hsi), 1906 
On display at the Summer Palace, Beijing

Vos ultimately painted two portraits of the Empress, who was 71 years old. In Vos' portraits she looks considerably younger, and the artist reportedly enlarged her eyes and plumped her lips at Cixi's request. One of the portraits is in the collection of Harvard University while the other, larger image has remained in China. That version was severely damaged in the 1950s, and was recently restored by a group of experts from the Dutch province of Limburg. It was put back on public display at the Summer Palace in November of 2008.

In August of 2011, Hubert Vos' grandson -- Hubert D. Vos -- donated six Vos portraits of Chinese subjects to Beijing's Capital Museum. They depict statesman Li Hongzhang, warlord Yuan Shikai, Prince Yi Kuang, a Manchu boy, the daughter of an official of the Fujian navy, and a Suzhou girl from an aristocratic family.

Mr. Vos told a Chinese news reporter that although he cherished the pictures very much "I think they should return to their birthplace."

Links:

Hubert Vos: The Empress Dowager of China, Cixi (1835-1908) Harvard Collections

The Restored Empress on display

Dutch Documentary (video) on the restoration of Hubert Vos Portrait of the Empress

ManilART is a Growing Event

 In the New York based art blog Hyperallergic, blogger Carren Jao reports on the growth and diversity of the Manilla based annual art fair "ManilART," which ran took place earlier this month.

Chao notes that:

The event has grown tremendously, with 43 participating galleries and 11,700 people passing through the halls this year (compared to 6,000 last year). From a modest tent area it has now transferred to the sprawling SMX Convention Center (the largest trade venue in the country).

Learn more about ManilArt by reading the Chao's complete blog here.

Remembering Anita Magsaysay-Ho (1914-2012)

From the Geringer Art biography archive, a biography of the late Anita Magsaysay-Ho: 

Above Painting by Anita Magsaysay-Ho

ANITA CORPUS MAGSAYSAY-HO (Philippine, b. May 25, 1914, d. May 5, 2012)

aka Anita Magsaysay, Anita Magsaysay Ho 

Styles: Philippine Modern, Neo-Realism

Subjects: Philippine genre scenes, landscapes, harvest and market scenes, female nudes

Anita Magsaysay-Ho was a Philippine painter, considered by many to be one of the most important and gifted Philippine modernists. In 1958, a panel of experts assembled by the Manila Chronicle named her one of the 6 most outstanding painters in Philippine history.  Magsaysay-Ho’s best known canvases, which often have both realist and stylized aspects, celebrate the beauty of Philippine women engaged in everyday tasks. 

Magsaysay-Ho was born in Manila in May, 1914, the daughter of Ambrosio Magsaysay, an engineer, and Armilla Corpus. Anita’s first cousin, Ramon Magsaysay, served as President of the Philippines from December of 1953 until his death in a 1957 plane crash. Beginning her studies at the University of the Philippines School of Fine Arts at the age of 13 -- accompanied by a nanny -- she studied with Fabian de la Rosa, Vicente Rivera y Mir and also Fernando and Pablo Amorsolo. Fernando Amorsolo was her landscape teacher, while Pablo Amorsolo taught her drawing. 

She also received private tutoring from the noted cartoonist Ireneo Miranda. She recieved additional instruction at the UP’s School of Design where her instructors included Victorio Edades and Enrique Ruiz, and at the "Atelier of Modern Art" founded by Edades. 

In the 1930s Anita Magsaysay travelled to the United States where she continued her studies at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. Anita also took courses in oil painting, and drawing at the Art Student’s League in New York City. While in New York, Anita met her future husband, Robert Ho, who was also a student. After their marriage, he bought postwar ships in the United States and brought them to China where he established a shipping business: Magsaysay Inc. Because of her husband’s work, the Hos and moved frequently, living in Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan. Anita, who has moved over 40 times in her lifetime, was soon raising 5 children. Anita was painting whenever possible, and always had a home studio where her children would sketch, play the piano and listen to music while she painted. 

During the early 1940s Magsaysay - Ho's works showed the influence of Fernando Amorsolo both in their subject matter and their luminosity. Gradually, her paintings evolved towards modernism as they moved towards cubist distortion and evolved stylized visual rhythms. She was included on a list of “Thirteen Moderns” compiled by artist Victor Edades, and was at one point known as the "female Amorsolo." 

In the 1950s Magsaysay-Ho exhibited at the important Philippine Art Gallery (PAG) which brought her public attention and acclaim. Her work was grouped with that of other Neo-Realists including Lydia Arguilla and Nena Saguil. Anita’s paintings of this period featured women at work: harvesting fruit, gathering and sheaving grain, or selling fish in the marketplace. Her works were formally activated by bold brushwork and strong contrasts of dark and light tones. 

 In the 1960s the space of Magsaysay-Ho’s paintings opened up and the resulting images were more relaxed, with clearly articulated and separated figures. The lines in her work softened, and her modeling became more consistent. These paintings have the feeling of being choreographed, and are very graceful in their effect. 

In the 1970s Magsaysay-Ho explored a new style influenced by Chinese calligraphy. Her paintings were often decorated with delicately controlled ink blots that suggested rock formations, vegetation or waves. At their best, they balanced human gestures with the calligraphic interest provided by the ink blots.

In the late 1980’s the artist had a “Green Period.”  Green-hued fruit and vegetables mingle with female figures that seem to resemble plants or fruits themselves. The women in these paintings feature oval faces with high cheekbones and narrow eyes. 

Another series that followed the green paintings featured half figures surrounded by baskets, fruit and birds. These figures are solid and highly refined, rendered in an Asian palette that counter-balanced stark contrasts between colors such as burnt sienna and yellow-green. 

In her nineties Magsaysay-Ho became the subject of a biography by Alfredo Roces, “In Praise of Women,” published in 2005. She states, in the text; “In my works I always celebrate the women of the Philippines. I regard them with deep admiration and they continue to inspire me—their movements and gestures, their expressions of happiness and frustration; their diligence and shortcomings; their joy of living. I know very well the strength, hard work and quiet dignity of Philippine women, for I am one of them.”

After suffering a stroke in 2009 Magsaysay-Ho stopped talking. One day, regaining her speech, she called her husband and told him "Robert, you are the only man I ever loved in my life."

Awards:

2nd Prize: The Manila Grand Opera House Exhibition, 1950, for “Five Senses”

1st Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1952, for “The Cooks”

2nd Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1953, for “Fruit Vendors”

1st Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1959, for “Mending the Nets”

1st Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1960, for “Two Women”

2nd Prize: The Philippine Art Association (PAG), 1962, for “Trio”

Collections:

The Ateneo Art Museum, Ateneo de Manila University, The Philippines

The Lopez Memorial Museum and Library, Pasig City, The Philippines

The Metropolitan Museum of Manila, The Philippines

The Yuchengo Museum, Makati City, The Philippines

Fabián De La Rosa and His Times

Part one of a 14 minute video, produced by Filipiniana.net, in cooperation with the UP Vargas Museum, which traces the life and career of the internationally-acclaimed 20th century Filipino master Fabián De La Rosa. De La Rosa's rightful place in Philippine art history has often been obscured by his more illustrious predecessors, Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, and his famous protégé and nephew, Fernando Amorsolo.

Ambeth R. Ocampo on Fernando Amorsolo

On September 8th at 3PM, Professor Ambeth R. Ocampo of Ateneo de Manila University will present "Fernando Amorsolo: Portrait of the Artist as Historian." Professor Ocampo is known for his unique blend of academic rigor and wit.

Each lecture is P300 for adults and P200 for students, senior citizens, and Ayala Museum members. The cost includes a copy of an Ambeth Ocampo book and full admission to all museum galleries.

Ayala Museum is at the corner of Makati Ave. and De la Rosa St. in Greenbelt Park, Makati City. For information on this series, call 757-7117 to 21 local 29, e-mail education@ayalamuseum.org, or visit www.ayalamuseum.org.