Philippines Artist

Philippines artist Fernando C. Amorsolo was the first painter given the National Artist award. He is one of the greatest Filipino painters of all time.

He has done numerous paintings which has caught the fancy of many. Some of his major works include My Wife, Salud; Maiden in a Stream; Rice Planting; The Mestiza; Planting Rice; and Sunday Morning Going To Town.

He also made drawing studies of farmers planting rice and harvesting and city folks doing cooking, dining or trying to get through the Japanese wartime occupation. He was known within his circle as a man of few words. He was polite and very respectful. It has been said that his art was seen as the extension of his personality.

He was born in Paco, Manila on 30 May 1892 and died in 1972. He is the son of Pedro Amorsolo and Bonifacia Cueto. He married Salud Jorge in 1916, they had six children. When Salud died in 1931, Amorsolo married Maria del Carmen, with whom he had eight children.

He spent his youth in Daet, Camarines Norte. When his father died, their entire family moved to Manila to live with his mother's first cousin, painter Fabian de la Rosa. To raise money, Fernando sold watercolor postcards to a bookstore which paid him 10 centavos a piece, while his mother did embroidery work.

He attended Liceo de Manila, where he gained honors especially in drawing and painting. At the age of 17, he enrolled at the University of the Philippines (UP) School of Fine Arts, where his uncle taught. He was one of the first graduates in 1919, receiving several medals for excellence.

Fernando Amorsolo did more than 10,000 drawings. He particularly loved to paint sunlight at high noon when contrasts were most strong. He was known for his brilliantly-lit landscapes, flattering portraits, and genre paintings of tanned, smiling young ladiess in traditional costumes.

Levi Celerio was a Filipino composer and lyricist who was best-known for being a leaf-player, a feat for which he was put into the Guinness Book of World Records. He was born in Tondo, Manila on 30 April 1910. Celerio was a prolific song-writer, with over 4,000 songs to his credit. He wrote a great number of songs for local movies, which earned for him the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Film Academy of the Philippines. In 1997, he was named National Artist of the Philippines for Music. He died on April 2, 2002.

Other famous Philippines artist include the following;

Carlos V. Francisco
Cesar Legaspi
Guillermo Estrella Tolentino
Hernando R. Ocampo
Vicente S. Manansala
Jose T. Joya
Napoleon V. Abueva