|
"Since forty-three years ago I have been drawing and up to now I still am. Why? Because I know that drawing is the most important weapon a painter must possess. Without it he is at a loss. And any painter could only achieve such a treasure by practicing one or two hours or more every day.
When a painter begins to imagine a certain symbol or thought to be expressed in visible and tangible, material form, he starts to draw in order to materialize his thoughts. Now how can he a painter be able to accomplish these if his hands cannot follow what his mind or feeling dictates? How? The painter's hand then must follow him. His hands must serve as his slaves. Then you have something there. Now that is only the beginning. And I repeat, only the beginning. An introduction to fine painting. And the rest-only heaven knows.
Don't think this is the only thing a painter needs. There are more things for him to learn and study and just as important as learning how to draw is working hard. Very hard."
|
 |
|
MANANSALA started exploring slightly abstracted images. He made realistic studies and
recast them into variations which became more and more abstract. But never completely
eliminating the initial image. Cocks fighting. A still life. Mother and Child.
Candle Vendors. Or simply — a nude. Form and feeling became Manansala's singular pursuit.
No doubt such an attitude was nurtured by his studies at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Canada
as a UNESCO fellow in 1949. As Manansala noted, discipline and dedication to art as one would
to a religion were the prevailing spirit at Banff. And, drawing. Drawing. And more drawing.
Except that Manansala started drawing differently.
Another scholarship to Paris a year after further honed Manansala's new vision. Somehow
Paris became for him — "the most alive segment" — of his life: it taught him to see the essence
of things, of painting. As he colorfully put it, he learned to discern feeling in a painting
and "...let it rock my whole system in the manner that an earthquake rocks the earth". He
realized that a good artwork is not just a matter of an apt spatial arrangement or whatever.
It must have, above everything else, "a feeling of consecration".
|
|
|
|
|
|
MANANSALA tried to go beyond the surface appearance of things. Reality as truth, a precept
drilled into his young mind before, had to be pushed back to the most remote recesses of his consciousness.
Even when he looked for lessons from the Masters, he constantly reminded himself: "I must scratch
deeper, try to grasp the roots, dip into the mainsprings, and thereby feel the pulse, feel the makings
of what drives these creators to create, how much of themselves they give away in their toil,
how much of the human being in them they crucify to turn out works of great importance".
CUBISM, which reduced reality into planes, sometimes simplifying forms, at other times
fragmenting them into a myriad of resonant shapes, became the new idiom through which
Manasala saw the world. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, one of Picasso's earlier exponents, aptly
noted that Cubism was essentially the resolution of the conflict between representation and structure.
MORE than four decades separated Manansala, however, from the formative years of Cubism. Paris of the
Fifties was actually riding the Abstract Expressionist current. Surface presence, the integrity of the
pictorial plane and that of the gesture were the cornerstones of the movement. These were the qualities
taken into Manansala's Cubist inflected idiom.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
IN 1941, Manansala won first prize in the National Art Exposition, University of Santo Tomas for his
entry Pounding Rice. In the 1950 Art Association of the Philippines' First Annual Art Competition,
he won first prize for his painting Banaklaot and an Honorable Mention for his entry I Believe in God.
Among his major works are the murals for the University of the Philippines Chapel (Stations of the Cross);
the Philippine Heart Center; and the National Press Club.
MANANSALA received the Republic Heritage Award and the Araw ng Maynila Award in 1963 and 1970, respectively.
In 1981, he was posthumously conferred the National Artist Award.
(* taken from Manansala Nudes by by Dr. Rod. Paras-Perez)
 back to top
Lopez Memorial Museum » Art Galleries: Modernists — Vicente Manansala
|
|
|
|
Vicente S. Manansala (1910-1981) Born in Macabebe, Pampanga on 22 January.
He studied at the U.P. School of Fine Arts (1926-1930). Manansala was given
a six-month UNESCO grant to Ecole de Beaux Arts in Banff and Montreal, Canada
in 1949 and a nine-month French government scholarship to the Ecole de Beaux
Arts, Paris in 1950.
