Arts & Leisure
Posted on February 09, 2016 08:32:00 PM
By Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman, Reporter
Fil-Am painter Alfonso Ossorio comes home
HE’S FINALLY HOME. After decades of making a name in the Western world of art -- he pioneered the wax resist on watercolor technique, has done an exhibit with Andy Warhol in the ’60s, and was influenced by and contemporaries with Jackson Pollock, a major figure in the birth of American abstract expressionism -- Filipino-American painter Alfonso Ossorio returns to the Philippines for his first ever, albeit posthumous, local exhibit.
“His exhibit is a reminder to the millennials and other Filipinos, who will be traveling the road that Ossorio has already traveled. There will be more Filipinos and Southeast Asians who’ll be finding themselves in the US and Europe having to compete against the best of the best,” co-curator Lisa Guerrero Nakpil told BusinessWorldwhen asked of the resonance of the exhibit in today’s times.
Apart from being an original artist, she said the exhibit is “a signpost on how to be able to stand tall with the current equivalent of Pollock and [Jean] Dubuffet and still be original and true to oneself.”
Dubuffet was a French sculptor and painter who founded the Art Brut or rough art movement in Europe. Mr. Ossorio met Dubuffet during his travel in Paris in 1949. Later, Mr. Ossorio would be inspired by the Art Brut style and would make artworks from random objects like eyeballs and bones, and mirror shards and shells. He called his collage “congregations.”
He might have called his newfound technique as “congregations” because “he’s deeply rooted with Catholicism,” said co-curator Tats Rejante-Manahan, who also wrote an extensive feature of Mr. Ossorio’s life and lifestyle, which appeared on Rogue magazine last year.
Born in 1916 as an heir to a vast shipping and sugar fortune in Negros Occidental, Mr. Ossorio was able to live and study abroad at Harvard and the Rhode Island School of Design. He was eventually naturalized as an American citizen in 1933.
In 1950, Mr. Ossorio revisited the Philippines, albeit a short time, after his family commissioned him to create a mural for the Chapel of Saint Joseph the Worker. It was dubbed The Angry Christ.
Mr. Ossorio started as an abstract expressionist but was better known for his congregations. “He’s a well-rounded artist. He had many influences and has done many experiments,” said Ms. Nakpil.
But Ms. Ossorio’s journey toward becoming an accepted artist in the US was paved with challenges. While at the right place and at the right time when the American modern art was booming in the ’50s, Ms. Nakpil said “there were some biases against him.” He wasn’t a starving artist. He was rich. His passion and talent were underappreciated because they were eclipsed by his affluence. In fact, he was a generous Pollock art buyer. The two became friends and as assistance, he would give the dirt-poor American artist from a cowboy family his monthly allowance. He bought one of Pollock’s most celebrated works, Number 1 1950 (Lavender Mist), which was on display at his sprawling mansion at the Hamptons, Long Island.
But Mr. Ossorio was a force to reckon with. Today’s critics arguably consider him as one of the most colorful, prolific, imaginative artists to emerge from the Abstract Expressionist movement. In 1977 and 1987, his works were included in exhibits at Whitney Museum of American Art in New York called 30 Years of American Art: 1945-1975 and 20th Century Drawings respectively. Last year, the same museum included him along with 400 more American artists who changed the art landscape in an exhibit called America is Hard to See.
“Before, Europe was the center of art. Then it was pulled by Pollock and Ossorio and other abstract expressionists in the US. They made their own little Silicon Valley, but art,” said Ms. Nakpil.
“If you like Steve Jobs, you’ll like Ossorio because of his boldness, experimentation, and originality. He’s a true global person.”
Afflictions of Glory will be exhibited from Feb. 6-21, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., at Leon Gallery, Corinthian Plaza, 121 Paseo de Roxas, Legazpi Village, Makati City. For more info on the exhibit, please contact Leon Gallery at (632) 856-2781 or info@leon-gallery.com.
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