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Module 5 ( Week 5 ) NATIONAL ARTISTS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO PARTICULAR
AREAS
Reference: *Sandagan, Luzviminda D.and Sayseng, Ayesha H., Contemporary Philippine Art from the
Regions, JFS Publishing Services,Manila.

Mendez, Mario L. Jr., Contemporary Philippine Art from the Regions, DIWA Learning Systems
Inc.,Philippines.

http://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/national-artists-of-the-philippines/

Module Overview

Lesson 5: National Artists in LITERATURE, FILM, ARCHITECTURE and FASHION DESIGN

2009 National Artist of the Philippine controversy

Main article: 2009 National Artist of the Philippines controversy
In August 2009, the conferment of the Order of National Artists on seven individuals by
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo became controversial when it was revealed that musician Ramon
Santos had been dropped from the list of nominees short-listed in May that year by the selection committee,
and that four other individuals had been nominated via "President’s prerogative": Cecilla Guidote-Alvarez
(Theater), Carlo J. Caparas (Visual Arts and Film), Francisco Mañosa (Architecture), and Pitoy
Moreno (Fashion Design).
Members of the Philippine art community–including a number of living members of the Order–protested
that the proclamation politicised the title of National Artist, and made it "a way for President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo to accommodate her allies." Specific protests were raised regarding the nomination of
Guidote-Alvarez, who was also Executive Director of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts,
because it was purportedly a breach of protocol and delicadeza (propriety), and of Caparas, on the grounds
that he was unqualified for nomination under both the Visual Arts and the Film categories. On July 16,
2013, the controversy finally ended after the Supreme Court of the Philippines voted 12-1-2 that voided the
four proclamations.
On June 20, 2014, five years after he was originally shortlisted in 2009, Ramon Santos was finally conferred
National Artist for Music by President Benigno S. Aquino III.
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 Music  Visual Arts
o Levi Celério o Napoleón V. Abueva (Sculpture)
o Ernani Joson o Larry Alcala (Comics)
Cuenco o Fernando C. Amorsolo (Painting)
o Felipe Padilla de o Benedicto "BenCab" Reyes Cabrera (Painting)
León o Francisco Coching (Comics)
o Francisco Feliciano o Victorio C. Edades (Painting)
o Lucrecia R. Kasilag o Carlos "Botong" V. Francisco (Painting)
o José Maceda o Abdulmari Asia Imao (Sculpture)
o Antonio J. Molina o José T. Joya (Painting)
o Lucio D. San Pedro o Ang Kiukok (Painting)
o Ramón Santos o César Legaspi (Painting)
o Andrea O. o Arturo R. Luz (Painting)
Veneración o Vicente S. Manansala (Painting)
o Antonio R.
o J. Navarro Elizalde (Painting)
Buenaventura
o Hernándo R. Ocampo (Painting)
o Jovita Fuentes
o Guillermo E. Tolentino (Sculpture)
o Ryan Cayabyab
o Federico Aguilar Alcuáz (Painting, Sculpture, and Mixed
 Dance
Media)
o Francisca Reyes
 Literature
Aquino
o Francisco Arcellana
o Amelia Lapeña
Bonifacio o Virgilio S. Almario
o Leonor Orosa- o Cirilo F. Bautista
Goquingco o N. V. M. Gonzalez
o Ramón Obusan o Amado V. Hernández
o Alice Reyes o Nick Joaquín
o Lucrecia Reyes o F. Sioníl José
Úrtula o Bienvenido Lumbera
 Theater o Resil Mojares
o Daisy Avellana o Alejándro R. Roces
o Honorata "Atang" o Carlos P. Rómulo
de la Rama o Edith L. Tiempo
o Rolando S. Tínio o José García Villa
o Salvador F. o Lázaro Francisco
Bernál (Set Design)  Film and Broadcast Arts
o Lamberto V. o Lino Brocka
Avellana
o Ishmael Bernál
o Wilfrido Ma.
o Gerardo de León
Guerrero
o Eddie S. Romero
o Severino Montano
o Fernando Poe Jr.
o Amelia Lapena
Bonifacio o Manuel Conde
 Architecture, Design, o Kidlat Tahimik
and Allied Arts
o Pablo
Antonio (Architecture)
o Juan
Nakpíl (Architecture)
o Leandro V.
Locsín (Architecture)
o Francisco
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Mañosa (Architecture)
o I. P.
Santos (Architecture)
o Ramón Valera
(Fashion Design)
o José María
Zaragoza (Architecture)
 Historical Literature
o Carlos Quirino

NATIONAL ARTISTS FOR LITERATURE

These are some of the National artist in recognition of his or her significant contributions to the development of
Philippine Arts and Letters:
 Hernandez’s contribution to the development of Tagalog prose is considerable — he stripped Tagalog of its
ornate character and wrote in prose closer to the colloquial than the “official” style permitted.
 His novel Mga Ibong Mandaragit, first written by Hernandez while in prison, is the first Filipino socio-
political novel that exposes the ills of the society as evident in the agrarian problems of the 50s.
 Hernandez’s other works include: • Bayang Malaya • Isang Dipang Langit • Luha ng Buwaya •Tudla at
Tudling: Katipunan ng mga Nalathalang Tula 1921-1970 • Langaw sa Isang Basong Gatas at Iba Pang
Kuwento ni Amado V. Hernandez • Magkabilang Mukha ng Isang Bagol at Iba Pang Akda ni Amado V.
Hernandez.
JOSE GARCIA VILLA National Artist for Literature
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 August 5, 1908 – February 7, 1997 He is considered as one of the finest contemporary poets regardless of
race or language. He lived in Singalong, Manila
 Introduced the reversed consonance rhyme scheme, including the comma poems that made full use of the
punctuation mark in an innovative, poetic way.
 The first of his poems “Have Come, Am Here” received critical recognition when it appeared in New York in
1942 that, soon enough honors and fellowships were heaped on him: Guggenheim, Bollingen, the American
Academy of Arts and Letters Awards.
 He used Doveglion (Dove, Eagle, Lion) as penname, the very characters he attributed to himsel

  He enriched the English language with critics coining “Joaquinesque” to describe his baroque
Spanish-flavored English or his reinventions of English based on Filipinisms. Aside from his handling of
language, Bienvenido Lumbera writes that Nick Joaquin’s significance in Philippine literature involves his
exploration of the Philippine colonial past under Spain and his probing into the psychology of social changes
as seen by the young, as exemplified in stories such as Doña Jeronima, Candido’s Apocalypse and The Order
of Melchizedek.
 Written plays, novels, poems, short stories and essays including reportage and journalism. As a journalist,
Nick Joaquin uses the name de guerre Quijano de Manila but whether he is writing literature or journalism,
fellow National Artist Francisco Arcellana opines that “it is always of the highest skill and quality”.
 Among his voluminous works are: • The Woman Who Had Two Navels • A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino •
Manila, My Manila: A History for the Young • The Ballad of the Five Battles • Rizal in Saga • Almanac for
Manileños • Cave and Shadows

  Essentially though, Romulo was very much into writing: he was a reporter at 16, a newspaper editor
by the age of 20, and a publisher at 32. • He was the only Asian to win America’s coveted Pulitzer Prize in
Journalism for a series of articles predicting the outbreak of World War II. Romulo, in all, wrote and
published 18 books, a range of literary works which included The United (novel), I Walked with Heroes
(autobiography), I Saw the Fall of the Philippines, Mother America, I See the Philippines Rise (war-time
memoirs).
 His other books include his memoirs of his many years’ affiliations with United Nations (UN): –Forty Years:
A Third World Soldier at the UN –The Philippine Presidents - his oral history of his experiences serving all
the Philippine presidents.
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  September 6, 1916 – August 1, 2002

 Writer, poet, essayist, critic, journalist and teacher, and one of the most important progenitors of the modern
Filipino short story in English. He pioneered the development of the short story as a lyrical prose-poetic form.
For Arcellana, the pride of fiction is “that it is able to render truth that is able to present reality”. A brilliant
craftsman, his works are now an indispensable part of a tertiary-level-syllabi all over the country. Arcellana’s
published books are Selected Stories (1962), Poetry and Politics: The State of Original Writing in English in
the Philippines Today (1977), The Francisco Arcellana Sampler(1990).Some of his short stories are: • Frankie
• The Man Who Would Be Poe • Death in a Factory • Lina • A Clown Remembers • Divided by Two • The
Mats • His poems being: • The Other Woman • This Being the Third Poem This Poem is for Mathilda • To
Touch You and I Touched Her.

ROLANDO S. TINIO
 March 5, 1937 – July 7, 1997 • Playwright,
thespian, poet, teacher, critic and translator.
 Tinio’s chief distinction is as a stage director
whose original insights into the scripts he handled
brought forth productions notable for their visual
impact and intellectual cogency. Subsequently,
after staging productions for the Ateneo
Experimental Theater (its organizer and
administrator as well), he took on Teatro Pilipino.
It was to Teatro Pilipino which he left a
considerable amount of work reviving traditional
Filipino drama by re-staging old theater forms like
the sarswela and opening a treasure-house of
contemporary Western drama. It was the
excellence and beauty of his practice that claimed
for theater a place among the arts in the
Philippines in the 1960s.
 His collections of poetry: • Sitsit sa Kuliglig •
Dunung – Dunungan • Kristal na Uniberso • A
Trick of Mirrors.
 Film scripts: • Now and Forever • Gamitin Mo
Ako • Sarswelas: • Ang Mestisa • Ako • Ang Kiri • Ana Maria

NATIONAL ARTISTS FOR FILM

Kidlat Tahimik, National Artist for Cinema

Widely regarded as the father of independent Philippine cinema, Kidlat Tahimik (real name: Eric de Guia) is
known for creating films that humorously but evocatively critique neocolonialism. A native of Baguio City, Tahimik
has garnered numerous international and local awards for his films. His first, Perfumed Nightmare (1977), won the
International Critics Award at the Berlin Film Festival. He has gone on to inspire generations of Filipino filmmakers
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to forge on with their independent vision, regardless of commercial considerations. In 2009, he received the UP
Gawad Plaridel Award, the University of the Philippines’ highest award recognizing achievements in media.

ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN, AND ALLIED ARTS

The contribution of Ramon Valera, whose family hails from Abra, lies in the tradition of excellence of his works, and
his commitment to his profession, performing his magical seminal innovations on the Philippine terno.

Valera is said to have given the country its visual icon to the world via the terno. In the early 40s, Valera produced a
single piece of clothing from a four-piece ensemble consisting of a blouse, skirt, overskirt, and long scarf. He unified
the components of the baro’t saya into a single dress with exaggerated bell sleeves, cinched at the waist, grazing the
ankle, and zipped up at the back. Using zipper in place of hooks was already a radical change for the country’s elite
then. Dropping the panuelo–the long folded scarf hanging down the chest, thus serving as the Filipina’s gesture of
modesty–from the entire ensemble became a bigger shock for the women then. Valera constructed the terno’s butterfly
sleeves, giving them a solid, built-in but hidden support. To the world, the butterfly sleeves became the terno’s
defining feature. Even today, Filipino fashion designers study Valera’s ternos: its construction, beadworks, applique,
etc. Valera helped mold generations of artists and helped fashion to become no less than a nation’s sense of aesthetics.
But more important than these, he helped form a sense of the Filipino nation by his pursuit of excellence.

Leandro Locsin (1928-1994) was in some ways a quintessential Renaissance man. A brilliant architect, interior
designer, artist, and classically trained pianist, Locsin was also a keen art collector, amassing a sizable collection of
fine Chinese art and ceramics during his lifetime. It is for his buildings, however, that he is remembered. From airport
terminals to memorial chapels, arts centers to stock exchange
UPLB Public Library, designed by structures, Locsin left his mark on the urban landscape of the
Leandro Philippines. He was determined to reconfigure western
architectural mores for a Filipino audience. His most substantial
contribution to Filipino architecture is the Cultural Center of the
Philippines, a collection of five buildings that demonstrate the
architect’s drive to find a vernacular form of modernist
architecture. The National Theatre building within the complex
is a good example of Locsin’s trademark style. Known as
“floating volume,” it consists of a two-floor-high block of
travertine marble cantilevered 12 feet into the air. The theatre
harks back to traditional Filipino dwelling huts, but on a
monumentally modern scale.

The father of Philippine landscape architecture, Ildefonso Paez

Santos, or IP Santos as he was known, created some of the best-
loved urban spaces in the Philippines. Landscape architecture,
which
deals with parks, plazas, and green spaces, was a little-
considered element of urban planning in the first half of the
20th century. However, Santos changed that, carrying out
pioneering work that, after four decades in the profession, led
him to become National Artist for Architecture in 2006. One of
his earliest successful projects was the Makati Commercial
Center, an outdoor shopping mall in which the shop fronts and
walkways were interspersed with garden trails, fountains, and
public artworks. This led him to be commissioned to revitalize
Manila’s Paco Park, the work for which he is perhaps best
remembered. A former Spanish cemetery and Japanese
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ammunitions store, the park was transformed into a national park in 1966. He revived the park’s grounds and
incorporated the original park structures between 1967-1969 Santos including memorial sites and fortification walls,
into a space for urban recreation.

One of the first exponents of modernist architecture in the Philippines, Pablo Antonio (1901-1975) is revered as a
pioneer and the foremost architect of his time. This success was perhaps unexpected for a boy who was orphaned at 12
and who dropped out of his first architecture program. It was during
his studies at the University of London that Antonio began to shine,
completing a five-year program in only three years. He went on to
revolutionize popular architecture in the Philippines, eschewing the
fashionable neo-classical style for his own version of art deco.
Antonio was acutely aware of the demands made on architecture by
the unforgiving Philippine climate. Buildings such as the Galaxy
Theatre, the Far Eastern University, and the Manila Polo Club display
practical innovations such as natural ventilation systems and
sunscreens, all of which are rendered in Antonio’s signature style:
clean lines, strong shapes, and simplicity. As Antonio’s son Pablo Jr
explains, “for our father, every line must have a meaning, a purpose.
For him, function comes first before elegance and form.”

The son of veterans of the Philippine Revolution, Juan Nakpil

(1899–1986) was committed to the belief that architecture built in the
Philippines should reflect its cult ure and people. In his early career, Nakpil spent time studying in the United
States and France, absorbing the lessons of international
Quiapo Church architecture. When he returned to Manila in the mid-1920s,
Nakpil applied his new-found knowledge to Filipino
structures. He worked on the restoration of the home of
national hero Jose Rizal and, like Locsin, took inspiration
from traditional stilt houses, remaking them in cantilevered
concrete on a mammoth scale. His own holiday home was
designed along these lines, combining
traditional nipa roofing (made out of natural materials)
with a poured concrete base.  Nakpil worked on dozens of
buildings across the nation, from the Manila Jockey Club
and the Quiapo Church, to the Mabini Shrine and
government departments. Despite his determination to
make buildings specifically for Filipino citizens, some of
his designs were considered too radical by the public.
Nakpil’s stainless steel pylon, superimposed over a granite
obelisk memorialising Jose Rizal was unpopular and was soon removed. But Nakpil’s failures were few, and he
remained one of the Philippines’ most popular and revered architects until his death. He was named a National Artist
for Architecture in 1973.

Francisco Mañosa
Francisco ‘Bobby’ Mañosa has been challenging architectural convention in his native country for five decades. He
displayed an artistic temperament from an early age and remained a keen painter throughout his life. Along with his
three brothers, Mañosa eventually chose to pursue architecture, and before long became the “outspoken champion of
indigenous architecture,” thus popularizing the idea of Philippine architecture for Filipinos. Mañosa’s distinctive style,
known as Contemporary Tropical Filipino Architecture, is a heady mixture of seemingly incongruous elements.
Coconut lumber, rattan, shell, thatch, and even indigenous textiles are juxtaposed with hypermodern materials: metal,
glass, concrete. The Coconut Palace at the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex typifies Manosa’s style. Its
coconut gourd roof, coconut shell chandelier, and pineapple fiber bedcovers are infused with technological innovation
for the modern era. In 2009 Mañosa was designated a National Artist in Architecture.
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Carlos A. Santos-Viola

An urbane young man who enjoyed lawn tennis and playing the saxophone, Carlos Santos-Viola was also a gifted
architect. He was a devout Catholic throughout his life, and many of his best known designs were executed for
the Iglesia Ni Cristo, a Filipino religious group. Santos-Viola created churches for the group all over the archipelago,
designed in a style quite distinct from that of his contemporaries. Instead of the monumentalism of Leandro Locsin or
the art deco simplicity of Pablo Antonio, Santos-Viola chose to incorporate Gothic and Baroque elements into his
modern churches. The Central Temple he built for the Iglesia Ni Cristo shows these revivalist flourishes working in
harmony with Santos-Viola’s passion for geometric shapes and, perhaps more than anything else, functionality. The
desire for functionality informed almost all of Santos-Viola’s work, and he was fond of asserting that “the structure
must not only look good but must also be made well.”

ACTIVITY 1

1. Who are the National Artists in LITERATURE, FILM, ARCHITECTURE and FASHION DESIGN?
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2. What are their contributions in the country and to contemporary arts?

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3. What are the National Artists Controversies during their awarding?

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4. How does one become a National Artists Awardee?

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5. Are there any qualifications to become a National artist’s awardee? Explain.

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SELF- CHECK

Directions: Fill in the blanks the missing information below. Give at least one major artworks or contribution of the
following artists and vice versa.

ARTISTS CONTRIBUTION

1. Vicente Manansala _______________

2. Fernando Amorsolo _______________
3. ________________ Isang Dipang Langit
4. Carlos P. Romulo _______________
5. ________________ Sitsit sa Kuliglig
6. ________________ The Woman Who Had Two
Navels
7. Kidlat Tahimik _______________
8. Ramon Valera _______________
9. _______________ Have Come, Am Here
10. _______________ The other Woman

SELF- REFLECT

What are the roles and contributions of the national artists in music, dance, theater, visual arts,
literature, film, and architecture and fashion design?

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