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Ayala Museum continues with its mission to impart art appreciation and educate Filipinos, especially the younger generation, on the country’s rich culture and heritage through its permanent gold exhibit collection and a series of specially curated exhibits highlighting some of our great Filipinos artisans in the field of textiles, ceramics and pottery.
Last year, I had the opportunity to view one of our greatest Filipino artists, Juan Luna’s long-lost painting “Hymen, o Hymenee,” which won a bronze medal at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, France, at the Ayala Museum.
It is a beautiful work of art that Ayala was able to showcase after the painting had been deemed “lost” for decades, hidden away in a private collection abroad. A series of fortunate events allowed the beautiful work of art to be displayed and opened to the Filipino public, making us proud that a Filipino artist had the talent to create such a masterful painting that has been recognized internationally.
The Juan Luna exhibit was also an opportunity for the Ayala Museum to introduce our art heritage to the younger generation of Filipinos who are more familiar with digital art and have less opportunity to truly learn and appreciate the unfortunately small trove of historical Filipino art that is mostly hidden away in private collections and enjoyed by a privileged few, more valued for their monetary worth, rather than shared to a wider audience for their artistic and aesthetic value and importance to the Filipino public.
This year, Ayala Museum has chosen to highlight our first national artist Fernando Amorsolo y Cueto (1892–1972) in an interactive exhibition that also educates and helps viewers to understand how the disability of color-blindness can affect the lives of those afflicted with the genetic disorder.
Amorsolo: Chroma is an exhibition that reintroduces Fernando Amorsolo to a new generation of Filipinos. I’m sure young Filipinos are familiar with Amorsolo street in Makati but are not quite aware exactly of who and what he was.
I was able to view the exhibit last week with Monica Fernandez of Ayala Museum’s marketing department, ably guiding me to appreciate the exhibit curated by Tenten Mina who had previously curated last year’s Juan Luna exhibit.
According to Mina, “Scholars and art enthusiasts have talked about the importance of light and color in Amorsolo’s body of work for decades, but we also have to ask what this means to today’s audience in the age of hypermedia and filters. We also wanted the exhibition to spark discussions. What happens when we view his works alongside those of his contemporaries? How did his particular use of light and color come to define a national aesthetic? And is it a shared experience?”
Like most of the elder generation of Filipinos, I have some limited knowledge of Amorsolo’s work, especially his depiction of pastoral or rural Philippines of Filipino women and men in idyllic farms scenes, harvesting rice, or Filipina lavanderas, washing their clothes in pristine rivers.
Monica was a treasure trove of artistic knowledge, sharing background on Amorsolo and his artistic, but also very commercial and lucrative career, much like a commercial photographer who was able to produce a number of artwork that seemingly used a template that he could tweak for changes in color, clothing and background with basically the same model.
Likewise, Amorsolo produced more granular details from some of his grander paintings, showcasing his prolific talent to produce art on commission and, thus, to some extent, resulting in the inevitable forgery of some of his well-known art.
The curated selection of Amorsolo’s work at the Ayala Museum also helped explain who helped influence the artist’s works, such as less well-known artist Fabian dela Rosa (1869-1937) who also painted notable Filipino scenery such as the untitled Mayon volcano and lake scenery that is part of the Amorsolo exhibit.
One interesting detail I noted in some of Amorsolo’s paintings of Intramuros and other rural scenes, was his inclusion of vibrant orange fire trees that we still see and enjoy, but which I feel are not adequately cultivated and highlighted as uniquely Filipino along our streets and thoroughfares. In fact, with our increasingly warm weather, fire trees provide such vibrant color to our surroundings and visual relief even with the humid and hot weather.
It was also interesting that while Amorsolo is well known for his modest Filipinas, he has also done some nudes, with one nude painting of a caucasian blonde featured in the exhibit.
The Amorsolo exhibit invites visitors of all ages to rediscover the genius of the prolific artist and explore how he helped shape the way Filipinos have seen themselves for nearly a century — and what his iconic, light-filled vision means to Filipinos today.
Alongside iconic pastoral scenes and plein air (done outdoors) landscapes, visitors can interact with hands-on experiences — from paint-by-color walls to color vision deficiency digital stations to a “light room” exploring how color works in both art and technology. This marks the first time the Ayala Museum is launching an exhibition on a revered master of Philippine art with interactivity in mind.
Toward the end of his career, Amorsolo’s eyesight faded due to health reasons and he was forced to undergo an operation in 1969. With this in mind, the exhibition was designed considering the experience and accessibility of art. In a first for Philippine museums, EnChroma Color Blind Glasses will be available for visitors with color vision deficiency — a condition that affects nearly five percent of Filipinos.
The Amorsolo exhibit also reflects Ayala Museum’s effort to make art more accessible to persons with disabilities. The exhibition runs until Sept. 7. The museum is open Tuesdays to Sundays, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and is made possible with the support of BPI and Boysen.
Guests may book their visits online at ayalamuseum.org/visit. Walk-ins are welcome.
