Maestro Rafael Pacheco celebrates Golden Year in visual arts

10/14/2007

Rafael Pacheco has one unswerving mission: to fully experience “the joy of art as celebration of life.” In 2007-2008, he enters his 50th year of creating art works that reflect his philosophy and passion. His mountain studio-resort in the Uugong hills of Morong, Rizal, will be humming with creative activity and resound with the fellowship of artist.

Ka Paeng, as he is known to his friends in the art world, art collectors and countless students whose lives he has touched, has a lot to celebrate. He enjoys a reputation as the undisputed leading exponent of finger-painting in the art. He has had a successful “second life”— according to his late buddy, the great Nick Joaquin—as a masterful sculptor of monumental works. He enjoys the respect and recognition accorded him by many folk artist particularly in the lakeshore region of Rizal, who regard him as their champion and spokesman. And lately, he has reveled in a new-found skill and enthusiasm in using the wonders of modern digital technology to push the boundaries and possibilities of visual art.

Capping half a century of art making

The epic struggle of Rafael Pacheco to carve a name for himself since his “Mabini Days,” and to proclaim his mission in the highly contentions world of Philippine art will be given a bold affirmation during his 50th year in art, which will witness a series of events during the coming months. The celebration actually got off to a rousing start at the Uugong gallery in Morong recently, with the formal declaration of year 2007-2008 by the artist as his “Ginintuang Taon sa Sining” (Golden Year in the Arts), in the presence of family, friends and fellow artists.

Among those who attended the festive occasion were Morong town mayor Jojo Buenaventura, National Artist and Mrs. Napoleon Abueva, leading painter and head of Philippine Printmakers Association Raul Isidro, prolific art historian Manuel Duldulao, visual artists groups and Palanca Hall of Fame writer Ed Maranan, who has been commissioned to write a book on the life and works of Pacheco.

To make more meaningful the artist’s Golden Year, his fellow artists have prepared a series of events which include workshops on art education and lecture-demonstrations, as well as actual art exhibits. Feb. 4 of this year saw the formal opening of Pacheco’s art exhibit at his Uugong Nature Park in Morong, Rizal, as part of the celebration of the town fiesta. Featured were the artist’s latest works in the finger-painting depicting Mother and Child and other favorite themes, portraits and digitally enhanced representations of landscapes and nudes. On Feb. 23, the artist gave a series of finger-painting demos during the 2nd UP Art Jamboree in Diliman, Quezon City, under the direction of Lundayan sa Sining artist-president Yaying Santos.

February also saw the opening of the Pacheco Hall at the Morong National High School Museum, which conferred recognition on Ka Paeng for his services to Philippine art and to Morong’s cultural life. The artist in turn donated to the school several artworks, including the now iconic Ang Kayamanan ni Aling Cela, Mother and Child pieces, and portraits of old women, as his “tribute to the noble mothers of the town of Morong.”

The incumbent mayor of Morong, Hon. Jojo Buenaventura, has made known his intention to set aside a day to recognize the lifetime contributions of Pacheco to Philippine art and culture, and the artist’s place in Morong’ history. A Pacheco sculpture graces the town plaza—Alay Sa Kinabukasan, a work in concrete depicting the struggle of a Filipino family for the education of their child—where the tribute to the Maestro was held.

The next big events will take place in October this year, with the artist’s Golden Year retrospective show at the SM Megamall Art Center, and a bigger retrospective show to take place in October 2008 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, both to the organized by well-known environmentalist and civic leader Leonarda Camacho, who has long been a supporter and patron of Pacheco. The launch of the artist’s coffee table book, The Art World of Pacheco, is being planned to coincide with the exhibit at the CCP. Pacheco’s annual one man show at the Art Center of SM Megamall will open on Oct. 26 and will go on until Nov. 11.

October 2007 will also see a ceremonial tribute to Filipino artists, dubbed as “Alay at Parangal sa Artistang Pilipino,” which will take place at the Uugong Artists’ Sanctuary, to be attended by a number of the country’s leading visual artists and many of Pacheco,s friends in socio-civic organizations.

From Morong to Mabini

Pacheco’s retrospectives in 2007 and 2008 will make up the largest exhibit ever mounted by the artist, whose daring works and artistics mission have been praised over the years by the likes of Nick Joaquin, Napoleon Abueva, Jullie Yap-Daza, Leonarda Camacho and Odette Alcantara, among many others. Carmen Guerrero Nakpil memorably wrote of Pacheco’s long and multifaceted career: “His success embodies the struggle, growth and fulfillment of Philippine Art.”

The “Maestro of Morong” has, indeed, come a long way from the early privations of childhood and youth, when he and his mother, both abandoned, had to grapple with poverty, which precluded even a decent high school education for the boy who nursed big dreams for the future.

Pacheco found his artistics calling at a relatively late stage in his life, when he was in his thirties. He joined the circle of Mabini artists catering primarily to the tourist market, with their still-lifes and landscapes and portraits and religious imageries. Pacheco even then was destined to be headed somewhere else. In one big exhibit of the group held at the Manila Hotel in 1969, he won early recognition as Outstanding Mabini Artist.

This Mabini stage lasted from 1968 to 1971. During this time, he excelled in portraiture, and he was mainly influenced by the Rembrandt style of contrasting light and shadow. He did striking likenesses of famous people. His portrait of Pope Paul VI on black velour is as accurate as a photographic reproduction, and arguably more vivid. Already he was honing the finger-painting technique he would employ for the bigger works that lay ahead.

Pacheco rues the fact that Mabini artists have always been the underdogs of Philippine art, but what they probably lacked in “aesthetic orientation,” he says, they made up for with “visual impact.”

From Mabini to Makati

The first glimmer of the mainstream came for Pacheco in 1971, when he was invited by Vicente Manansala, later a National Artist, to join a group show at the Hidalgo Gallery in Makati, then the hub of the country’s art world. He was cited in this show as The Critics’ Choice. In 1972, Pacheco made the definitive move from Mabini to Makati when he staged his first major solo exhibit called “Wild Flowers in May” at the Hidalgo Gallery.

He has never been apologetic about the Mabini years and attributes his future development to the painstaking years of struggle and the discipline required to continuously produce paintings, necessary to survive as a Mabini artist. “If there had been no Mabini period, you would have no Pacheco today,” he said.

The artist’s mural-sized marine vistas of bright coral, aquatic blossoms, surreal sea grass, and multicolored fish are the images which have primarily drawn art collectors to Pacheco’s works, but these are but among the many manifestations of his ebullient outlook on the world, which sometimes may have penumbral limnings of the state of humanity and of the environment. But in their totality, they are reflective of the person as a phenomenal force in Philippine art, whose early works were already being praised by the future National Artist Hernando R. Ocampo as “a study in craftsmanship—powerful, primitive, and very personal.”

Manifestations of Mother

The most important influences in the molding of Pacheco’s artistic vision have been his mother, who symbolizes what to him are the most precious human values, such as selflessness, spirit of sacrifice, untiring devotion, and concern for a child’s happiness and future; his cultural heritage, which encompasses Filipino beliefs, folk, spiritual, and traditions; and the natural environment which, he feels, is under siege everywhere and needs to be protected and preserved.

The mother theme appears in his works in many forms, but the single image that would define his style and temperament, and form the basis for his aesthetic and rhetoric was Ang Kayamanan ni Aling Cela, completed in 1983. The painting shows an elderly woman with all her worldly belongings, most precious of which is a framed portrait of her son whom she has just seen through school. The original painting is owned by a buyer from Los Angeles, and has established a record of sorts with hundreds of lithographs produced, selling briskly here and in the United States.

Looking back, looking ahead

To be shown during the two-week twin exhibits will be paintings from the artist’s Mabini Period; old standards such as his very popular Mother and Child variations, which have been given a digital treatment, making them more accessible to the ordinary public who would like to acquire art works; works culled from his past exhibits, showcasing his celebrated undersea world vistas made through the Pacheco technique of finger-painting; and recent works which include an interesting juxtaposition of religious, devotional images, which cast a light on the human condition, and nudes whimsically entitled Mystical Maidens, for which professional models and well-known ladies posed.

A number of Pacheco’s friends and associates, themselves leading figures in the art community, will be giving lectures during the exhibit. Among them are painter and graphic artist Raul Isidro, who will talk on prints and printmaking, and prolific art historian and critic Manuel Duldulao, who will speak on art collecting, at various times during the course of the two retrospective one-man shows in 2007 and 2008, at the SM Art Center and the Cultural Center Philippines.

For details regarding the forthcoming Pacheco Golden Year art events, contact 653-1105 and 0928-4871643.

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